Burg was born on May 30, 1912, in the town of Vyzhnytsia, in the region of Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. In the years before World War I, the city of Chernivtsi, also called Czernowitz in both German and Yiddish, was the capital of the Bukovina region and a center of Yiddish language and culture. The region became part of Romania following World War I.

Burg published his first professional writing in the Chernovitser Bleter, a Yiddish newspaper, in 1934. The Romanian government closed and banned the Chernovitser Bleter in 1938, on charges of Bolshevik propaganda.

Burg survived the Holocaust during World War II, but lost his entire family.He took refuge in the Soviet Union.

Burg continued to write and publish his works well into his 90s. In 1990, Burg revived the once banned Chernovitser Bleter newspaper as a monthly publication.

Josef Burg died on August 10, 2009, in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, at the age of 97.

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