Editing Alberto Gerchunoff (section)

==Biography==
His family emigrated in 1889 to the Argentine Jewish agricultural colony of Moïseville, now [[Moisés Ville]], [[Santa Fe Province|Santa Fe]]. His father, Rab Gershon ben Abraham Gerchunoff was murdered by a [[gaucho]] on February 12, 1891. After a few months the family moved to [[Rajil]], another Jewish settlement near [[Villaguay]], [[Entre Ríos Province|Entre Ríos]]. The colony was founded by [[philanthropy|philanthropist]] Baron [[Maurice de Hirsch]] as a haven for [[Jew]]s fleeing the [[pogrom]]s of Europe. Later, he lived in Argentina's capital, [[Buenos Aires]]. [[Jorge Luis Borges]] described him thus:

::He was an indisputable writer, but his reputation transcends that of a man of letters. Unintentionally and perhaps unwittingly, he embodied an older type of writer ... who saw the written word as a mere stand-in for the oral, not as a sacred object.

Although he worked primarily as a journalist for Argentina's leading newspaper ''[[La Nación (Buenos Aires)|La Nación]]'', he also wrote many important novels and books on Jewish life in Latin America, including ''[[The Jewish Gauchos]] of the Pampas'' ({{ISBN|0-8263-1767-7}}), which was produced [[Los Gauchos judíos|into a movie in 1975]].

For most of his life Gerchunoff espoused [[Jewish assimilation|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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07194.html|title= Alberto Gerchunoff}}</ref> He is said to have collaborated with [[Wilhelm Reich]] on a version of his [[orgone box]] designed to preserve the core of Jewish [[Cultural memory|cultural memories]], many of which were collected by him as oral histories and published under the title ''Héroes de los Intersticios'' in 1948.<ref>{{cite book |title=Passion of Youth |author=[[Wilhelm Reich]] |date=12 July 1994 |isbn=1569249296}}</ref>