ARN and BROKHE BURSHTEYN

ARN and BROKHE BURSHTEYN (both b. 1934)

            Arn was born in Kiev; his father was an agronomist and his mother a bookkeeper. He graduated middle school in Birobidzhan and in 1957 the radio faculty of the Tomsk Polytechnical Institute. He worked as a designer, later becoming a senior scientific associate at a scholarly institute. Beginning in 1976, he published stories and essays in the Moscow journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), together with his wife Brokhe Burshteyn.

            Brokhe was born in Czernowitz, into the home of a construction engineer.  She graduated from middle school in Tomsk in 1953 and from the Sverdlovsk Polytechnical Institute in 1958.  She served as the head of construction in the farming division of the All-Union Scientific Academy.

Their works include: Dos ershte feld (The first field), stories and notes (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1980), 62 pp.; “Permer sotsyologn” (Perm sociologists), in the anthology In undzere teg, fartseykhenungen fun yidishe shrayber (In our time, notes of Yiddish writers) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1983); “Dertseylungen” (Stories), in Eynikeyt (Unity), prose collection (Moscow, 1988).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 76-77; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 43-44.