SHLOYME GELTNER

SHLOYME GELTNER (b. 1895)

            He was born in the village of Tovtry, at the border between Bukovina and Galicia.  His parents made their living from a small water mill.  He studied in the village with itinerant teachers.  In 1908 he emigrated to the United States, where he worked in various trades.  For a time in 1914, he worked as an actor and director of a Yiddish theater in Hoboken, New Jersey.  From 1936 he owned an apple farm in Armada, Michigan.  He was the author of memoirs entitled Mayne yunge un grine yorn (My young, inexperienced years), edited by Moyshe Glazer (Armada, Michigan, 1956), 170 pp.  He describes in vivid language with a humorous tone his experiences from 1908 to 1912, both in the Bukovina village and in America.

Source: Sh. Kindman-Mestl, in Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (November 30, 1956).