Bergelson was born on August 12, 1884, in the shtetl of Okhrimovo (also known as Okhrymovka, now Sarny, Cherkasy Oblast [ru] in Kiev province.

His early years were characterized by pogroms throughout the Pale of Settlement, catalyzed by the assassination of Czar Alexander II by a group of five young revolutionaries that included one Jew among them.

In spring 1921 he moved to Berlin, which would be his base throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, although he traveled extensively through Europe and also visited the United States in 1929-30, to cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York.

He began writing for the Communist Yiddish press in both New York (Morgen Freiheit) and Moscow (Emes), and moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, around the time the Nazis came to power in Germany.

Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on 12–13 August 1952.