Butler Area Public Library will host “From the Old World to Butler: The Autobiography of a Jewish Immigrant” at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14, as part of the library’s Stories of Exile series.

In 1949, the late Joseph Hurwitz, who spent a decade operating a successful scrap yard in Butler, heard about an essay contest sponsored by a Yiddish newspaper in New York that used the prompt “Why did you, as a Jewish immigrant, leave your home in the Old World and what are your accomplishments in this country?”

Hurwitz wrote a 28-page memoir titled “The Autobiography of a Jewish Immigrant,” which detailed his zigzag path from Lithuania — as Joseph Gureyovich — to Butler.

In this talk, Eric Lidji of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh will share stories from the memoir and its author.