Zygmunt Bauman`s life in fragments. The history of a Jewish family in Poland

Janina and Zygmunt Bauman

The renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was born in 1925 in Poznań into a Jewish family. He fled with his parents to the Soviet Union when the German army invaded. Back in Poland after the war, he met Janina Bauman, née Lewinson (1926–2009) in Warsaw in 1947 at an evening class at university. Janina was born in Warsaw and survived as a teenager in the Warsaw Ghetto. Her father, a well-known physician and Polish army officer mobilized in September 1939, was murdered by the Red Army in Katyń.

They got married and had three daughters: Anna, Irena, and Lydia. Janina worked as a translator and film editor at the state enterprise Polish Film, Zygmunt at first as a political officer in the Ministry of Public Security. He was dismissed in 1953 due to the alleged »Zionist activities« of his father.

Zygmunt earned his PhD and his habilitation at Warsaw University, where he worked as an assistant professor and lecturer. In January 1968, he resigned from the Polish United Workers’ Party. In March 1968, during the Polish government’s antisemitic campaign, he was dismissed from the university. The family then emigrated to Israel. With an appointment at the University of Leeds in 1971, the Baumans moved to the United Kingdom. Janina published two memoirs since the late 1980s, based in part on her diaries written during the war.