In March 1953, several days before the official announcement of Stalin's death, Eli Schechtman was imprisoned[1] as a Jewish nationalist[2] and charged with espionage and Zionism.

[3] In 1929 Schechtman met Sheindl (Zhenia) Magazinnik, an actress in a Jewish theater[4] got married and in 1932 moved to Kharkiv, and later in 1936 to Kyiv.

On the day following the Nazi's attack on the USSR, and the bombing of Kyiv, Eli Schechtman, and his family were evacuated to Uzbekistan.

He couldn't publish his novels[5] and the family struggled to survive, supported only by Sheindl's modest salary as a kindergarten teacher.

[6] In March 1953, several days before the official announcement of Stalin's death, Eli Schechtman was imprisoned as Jewish nationalist and charged with espionage and Zionism.

In 1973 he became the first author to receive an award from the Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, "for literary work in Yiddish."

His earliest publication was in 1928: the two poems from the cycle "In shpil fun shneyen" ("In the Play of Snows") were published in Di royte velt (The Red World).

His collection of stories, Oyfn sheydveg (At the Crossroads; 1930), and especially his novel Farakerte mezhes (Plowed Stripes, 1932–1936, reprinted in 1941), established him as a prose writer.

This was the first novel published in the new and solely Yiddish magazine Sovetish Heymland, which appeared in the USSR in 1961, more than 20 years after the outbreak of WW2 and the defeat of Jewish culture.

[17] In 1983, Eli Schechtman finished and published his monumental novel Erev, consisting of seven books, which the author called "The Menorah of My Life."

"Eli Chekhtman's novel could accompany the magnificent collection of the photographer Roman Vishniac with the title A Vanished World, which has preserved the memory of these Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, destroyed by the Shoah.

"[18] In 1988 Eli Schechtman began working on his last novel Byim shkie aker (The Last Sunset) which was published in 1994.

Gilles Rozier in his article "Le Yiddish d'une guerre à l'autre" compares Eli Shekhtman with his contemporaries Vasily Grossman and Varlam Shalamov.

[19] Before his death Eli Schechtman completed several short stories (published posthumously) as a collection, entitled Tristia.