Juan Gelman Burichson was born on 3 May 1930 in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.

He developed an interest in poetry at a very young age, influenced by his brother Boris, who read him several poems in Russian, a language the boy did not know.

In 1990, Gelman was led to identify his son's remains (he had been executed and buried in a barrel filled with sand and cement).

Years later, in 2000, he was able to trace his granddaughter, born in a backdoor hospital before María Claudia's murder and given to a pro-government family in Uruguay.

During his long exile, Gelman lived in Europe until 1988, then in the United States and later in Mexico, with his wife, Argentine psychologist Mara La Madrid.

Gelman included Uruguayan police officer Hugo Campos Hermida in a legal suit lodged in Spain for the "disappearance" of his daughter-in-law in Uruguay.