Memoirs of a Jewish Colonist

Mordechai Alpersohn

1922

Of Pimps, Prostitutes, and Other Seducers

We 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 iron railing of a fence, they began pleading with our wives and offering chocolates and other candies to our children. One by one they approached the…

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Creator Bio

Mordechai Alpersohn

1860–1947

Mordechai Alpersohn was born in Ukraine and received a traditional religious education. He immigrated to Argentina and established one of the first agricultural settlements there. His Thirty Years in Argentina: Memoirs of a Jewish Colonist, published in three volumes over the period 1922–1928, was a bestseller 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.

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