Meeting with Zygmunt Bauman

This event is part of the Bayit Hadash Month of Encounters with Jewish Culture organized by the Center for Jewish Culture in Kraków, and will be held at the Center, 17 Meiselsa Street in the Kraków district of Kazimierz.

Janina Bauman (nee Lewinson) was born in 1926 in Warsaw. Her father was Szymon Lewinson, an officer of the Polish Army who was murdered in Katyń.

She worked as a translator and proof-reader. In 1968, as a result of the so-called “March events” and the prevalent anti-Semitic campaign, she emigrated to Israel together with her husband, philosopher and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. They later settled in England.

Janina Bauman's autobiography „Zima o poranku. Opowieść dziewczynki z warszawskiego getta” („Winter in the Morning. A Young Girl’s Life in the Warsaw Ghetto”) was published in 1986 and in Polish in 1999.

This book is a record of the experiences of a teenage girl, who witnesses the tragedy of the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto. The author describes her escape from the occupied city and the years she spent hiding together with her mother and sister, moving from house to house near Warsaw and Kraków, sheltered by people they met along the way.

“We were given shelter by an educated family, a working class family, a drug addict who needed money for morphine, a prostitute entertaining Nazi soldiers, an occultist”, writes the author.

Bauman also wrote the books „Nigdzie na ziemi” („Nowhere on Earth”, Jewish Historical Institute, 2000) and „Powroty. Opowieść w czterech odsłonach” („Returns. A Story in Four Parts”, Zysk i S-ka, 1995). Janina Bauman died in Leeds in 2009.

The Bayit Hadash (New Home) Month of Encounters with Jewish Culture has been organized by the Center for Jewish Culture in Kraków since 1996. Numerous concerts, lectures and meetings with authors take place as part of this year's event.

The Center for Jewish Culture, which conducts Bayit Hadash, was founded in the Kazimierz district of Kraków on November 24th, 1993. Its main goals are to preserve the Jewish heritage of the Kazimierz district, to develop Polish-Jewish dialogue, to promote the values of an open civil society and to disseminate knowledge of the history and culture of the Polish Jews among young people.

The full program of the next Month of Encounters with Jewish Culturecan be found on the website of the Judaica Foundation – Center for Jewish Culture.