Gerchunoff, Alberto

(1884–1950)

   Argentine writer. Gerchunoff grew up in Moisés Ville, one of the Jewish agricultural colonies founded in the Argentine by Baron Maurice de HIRSCH through the Jewish colonization association, the lCA. He entered journalism in Buenos Aires and served for forty years on the staff of the leading daily, La Naçion, becoming its editor in chief. His literary works made him one of the best-known Spanish writers in Latin America and he was the founder and president of the Argentine Writers’ Association. In Los Gauchos Judios (1910; The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, 1955) he drew on his own childhood recollections.

   After the rise of HITLER he became a keen Zionist, and was active in rallying support for Jewish statehood among the national leaders and intellectuals of Latin America.