Elena Akselrod

Elena Akselrod was born in 1932 in Minsk

Elena Akselrod was born in Minsk in 1932. Her father was the artist Meer Akselrod and her mother was the Yiddish poet Riva Rubina. Her uncle, the Yiddish poet Zelik Akselrod, was arrested and executed in 1941.

She graduated from the literary department of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute in 1954. She began working as a translator in 1955.

Her first book of poetry for children came out in 1961, and she has published 8 books of poetry. In the Soviet Union she was known mainly as a children's poet and translator, working from Yiddish, German, English and other languages. She joined the Union of Soviet Writers in 1968.

Since 1991 she has lived in Maale Adumim, where she writes and translates from Hebrew. She wrote a study of her father's art and published a book of memoirs and letters in Moscow in 2008. Her son is the artist Michael Yachilevich.