Background
Wurf was born in New York City in 1919. The son of immigrants (his father was a tailor and textile worker) from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he developed polio at the age of four. As a young man growing up in Brighton Beach, he was inclined towards radicalism by his family's poverty and by communists he met. For some time he joined the Young Communist League; he subsequently left it for the Young People's Socialist League. He was a critical of both groups, but preferred the YPSL due to his dislike of Soviet totalitarianism.
Read more about this topic: Jerome Wurf
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)