 Juan Gelman Burichson was born on May 3, 1930, in Buenos Aires' Villa Crespo neighborhood to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.As a boy he read Russian and European literature widely under the tutelage of his brother Boris.His father, José Gelman, was a social revolutionary who participated in
the 1905 revolution in Russia; he immigrated to Argentina, went back shortly after the Bolshevik revolution, and then returned to Argentina for good, disillusioned.