Holocaust Survivor Tells His Story at Lafayette
Jose Urbach spent the first five years of his life under Nazi rule in Poland.
Jose Urbach's first memory is the sound of hammering. “The were constructing a gallow…to hang somebody," he told students at Lafayette College Tuesday night. "And that was a young man who had stolen a piece of soap.” It was the winter of 1945. Urbach was five years old, and at that point, had never not known war. Urbach was born in Poland in 1940, a few months after the German invasion that began World War II. He spent most of the first five years of his life in prison camps, an experienced he likened to being born blind. It's just how he thought the world worked: men stole soap and were hung. Everyone in the camp had to watch. The man hung there for 15 days, until his body resembled a puppet. Urbach, told his story as part of a series of …
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