Alexei Futiran was born in Tomashpol in 1925, the son of a coachman. Both his parents were also born in Tomashpol. He was one of six children; two of his brothers died fighting in the Second World War. He attended a Yiddish school for four years, and then completed his education at a Ukrainian language school. At the age of fifteen he began working as a carpenter. During the war he was evacuated to the east, and then drafted into the army in 1943, serving in the Far East until 1950. After the war, he worked as a leatherworker, making hats. He married his first wife in 1950. After she passed away, he remarried a non-Jewish woman. He has two sons, one in Moscow and one in Israel.