ARN BEYGELMAN

 ARN BEYGELMAN (1917-1994)

            He was a Soviet prose author, born in the city of Olwiopol (after 1920, Pervomays'k), Ukraine. In 1932 he graduated from the local Jewish school and together with his parents moved to the ethnic Jewish region of Nay-Zlatopol, where he worked in an agricultural colony. He later studied in the Jewish Zoological Technichum, though he did not graduate and returned to Pervomays'k. In 1937 he came to study at Moscow’s military aviation academy, but he was immediately drafted into the armed forces. After demobilization in 1945, he began studying at Moscow’s Library Institute, from which he graduated in 1950. From that point he worked in a variety of institutions, primarily as a bibliographer. He began writing after becoming a student, but he did not publish at that point. He only debuted in print in 1968 with a long story entitled “Der goldener laykhter” (The golden candlestick) in the journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), issues 11-12. The same story thoroughly rewritten appeared as a separate volume (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1990), 324 pp. The last work that he managed to publish was a major story entitled “A tsufal in transhey” (An accident in a trench), Di yidishe gas (The Jewish street) issues 1, 3, and 4 (1993).

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), p. 44.