Creator Bio
Mordechai Alpersohn
1860–1947
Mordechai (Marcos) Alpersohn was born in the Russian Empire and received a traditional religious education. He immigrated to Argentina and established one of the first agricultural settlements there. His Koloniye Moritsiyo: Draysig-yerige IKA kolonizatsiye in Argentine; a historishe shilderung (Thirty Years in Argentina: Memoirs of a Jewish Colonist, 3 vols., 1922–1928), was a best seller everywhere in the Yiddish-speaking world. In contrast to the idyllic tone of Albert Gerchunoff’s The Jewish Gauchos (1910), it was highly critical of the administrators of Baron de Hirsch’s Jewish Colonization Association, which sponsored the settlements. Alpersohn also wrote plays, short stories, and novels.
Content by Mordechai Alpersohn
Primary Source
The First Pioneers
Alpersohn’s narrative about the early days of Colonia Mauricio blames the Jewish Colonization Association’s local administrators for the colonists’ suffering.
Primary Source
Memoirs of a Jewish Colonist
I. Of Pimps, Prostitutes, and Other SeducersWe saw some ten richly-dressed women, accompanied by fat-bellied men in top hats, standing at the green metal gate of the immigrants’ hotel. Through the…