Alberto Gerchunoff

Alberto Gerchunoff (January 1, 1883 – March 2, 1950), was an Argentine writer born in the Russian Empire, in the city of Proskuriv, now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine.

His family emigrated in 1889 to the Argentine Jewish agricultural colony of Moïseville, now Moisés Ville, Santa Fe.

The colony was founded by philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch as a haven for Jews fleeing the pogroms of Europe.

For most of his life Gerchunoff espoused assimilationism for the Jews of Argentina, though altered his stance with the rise of Hitler, eventually advocating for the establishment of the state of Israel before the United Nations in 1947.

[1] He is said to have collaborated with Wilhelm Reich on a version of his orgone box designed to preserve the core of Jewish cultural memories, many of which were collected by him as oral histories and published under the title Héroes de los Intersticios in 1948.