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
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