Mordechai Alpersohn

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.