[2] Wolf and his sister were the only members of their family who survived the Nazi massacre of Jews in the village of Gaisen, Ukraine.

"[3][4][5] He fenced foil for the first two years, and then switched weapons and developed into a top saber fencer, winning two Ukrainian championships.

[3] He graduated in 1977 from Piddubny Olympic College (Kiev Ukrainian Academy of Sport), with a degree in physical education and coaching of fencing.

[6][7] Gelman immigrated to the United States on November 1, 1991, when he was 36 years of age, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[8][9][3][2] The driving force for him was that doctors had identified skin complications suffered by his daughter as being due to the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, and advised that her climate should be changed.

[10][8] He moved first to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, working odd jobs there, including washing dishes; a step down from his life in Kiev, where he had had a private driver.

[3][2] He was not able to find work in the US in fencing straight away, so he spent a year-and-a-half selling doughnuts that he made himself - along with coffee and tea - at a flea market alongside a New Jersey highway.

[5] In the 2001 Junior World Championships, Gelman's students Ivan Lee and Tim Hagamen were the first to win gold medals for the United States.

[16][15][17] He coached four of his proteges at the 2008 Beijing Olympics–Keeth Smart, Tim Morehouse, James Williams, and Jason Rogers, and they trained for the competition at his Manhattan Fencing Center.

[19][15][20] In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Daryl Homer, whom he had coached since Homer was 11 years old when Gelman started coaching him pro bono, and then at St. John's, and finally in the Olympics, won an historic individual silver medal in men's sabre fencing.

[7] At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Gelman again coached Team USA, which included among other his fencers Daryl Homer, Curtis McDowald, and Dagmara Wozniak.

[26] Also at the 2024 Paris Olympics, his fencers Elizabeth Tartakovsky and Maia Chamberlain competed for Team USA in women's saber.

[1] When she was eight years old, she had watched Gelman coach the United States saber team to the silver medal at the 2008 Olympics on television, and fell in love with the sport.

"[8] Gelman was inducted into US Fencing Hall of Fame on July 10 at the 2010 Summer National Championships in Atlanta.

It sponsors both children from low-income families who need financial aid to learn how to fence, as well as elite and Olympic-level athletes.