Alberto Gerchunoff — writer and journalist with roots in the Russian Empire
Alberto Gerchunoff was born on 1 January 1883 (one source gives 1884) in Proskurov, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Khmelnytskyi in Ukraine, to Gershon Gerchunoff and Ana, née Korenfeld; his original given name was Abraham. Around 1889 to 1891, by different accounts, the family emigrated to Argentina with the settlers of the Jewish Colonization Association, founded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, and were taken to Moisés Ville in Santa Fe province, the first of the Baron Hirsch colonies.
Within months of their arrival his father was killed in the colony, in 1891; the family moved to the colony of Rajil near Villaguay, in Entre Ríos, where the boy worked as a farmhand and ox-driver, and in 1895 to Buenos Aires. There he earned his living as a street vendor, errand boy and shop assistant while educating himself and mastering Spanish, and on becoming an Argentine citizen took the name Alberto.
He began writing for newspapers young, and in 1908 joined La Nación, the paper with which he would be associated for more than forty years; he also directed El Mundo. In its Sunday supplement he published sketches of the life of the Jewish colonists, which appeared as a book in April 1910, for the centenary of the May Revolution, under the title Los gauchos judíos. The twenty-six stories, portraying immigrants from the Russian Empire becoming part of rural Argentina without ceasing to be Jews, are considered the founding text of Jewish literature in Latin America and a classic of Argentine letters; a revised edition appeared in 1936, an English translation in 1955, and a film in 1974.
Gerchunoff wrote many other books, among them La jofaina maravillosa (1922), a tribute to Cervantes, Los amores de Baruj Spinoza (1932) and the autobiographical Entre Ríos, mi país (1950). He saw himself as a co-creator of the new Argentine culture; in the 1940s he spoke out against Nazism and antisemitism in Argentina, and in his last years he took an active part in Jewish life and in support for the creation of the State of Israel.
He died in Buenos Aires on 2 March 1950, in the street a few metres from the offices of La Nación.
"Brought to Argentina as a child with the Jewish Colonization Association settlers around 1889–91; lived in Moisés Ville and Rajil, then from 1895 in Buenos Aires."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Proskurov, Podolia Governorate (now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine)
Born in Proskurov, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire, in 1883, he emigrated to Argentina with his family as a child, among the first Jewish settlers of the Baron Hirsch colonies.
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Proskurov, Podolia Governorate (now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.