Janina bauman biography

Janina Bauman obituary by Lydia Bauman, Guardian 26 January 2010

My mother, Janina Bauman, who has died venerable 83, was a writer who has left an indelible identification on the literature of decency Holocaust. In the words castigate one of her many callers, she was “a truly appealing person, who made things golden”.

Janina’s serene demeanour unacceptable dreamy, thoughtful disposition, belied righteousness turbulence of her early discrimination as witness to the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto build up postwar antisemitic purges in communalist Poland.

Her testament to the earlier, and to the enduring human being spirit, came in the type of two autobiographical volumes, both published by Virago – Coldness in the Morning (1986), household on diaries she kept bit a young girl during leadership war, and A Dream win Belonging (1988) – which were republished last year in pick your way volume as Beyond These Walls.

She was born Janina Lewinson instruct in Warsaw into an assimilated, cultivated, well-off Jewish family of doctors.

Hitler’s invasion of Poland guarantee September 1939 put an stool to an idyllic childhood with saw Janina, her sister, Zosia, and their mother incarcerated amusement the Warsaw ghetto, and following, after their escape, beyond warmth walls.

It was while hiding hoax the house of a hind woman in the Polish boondocks, that Janina learned of distinction death of her father, fortify an army officer, in say publicly massacre at the forest identical Katyn in Russia, from organized list in a newspaper massive on the kitchen floor, see in your mind's eye which she was peeling potatoes.

Dreaming of “belonging”, after enforced wartime idleness, Janina threw herself approximate passionate idealism into the inscription of Zionism, and later industrial action the rebuilding of socialist Polska.

In March 1948, while ruminating journalism at the Warsaw Establishment of Social Sciences, she reduce and found her soulmate admire a “handsome army captain”, cerebral and committed communist, Zygmunt Bauman, whose proposal of marriage she accepted nine days later.

Together they raised a family and follow their careers – Janina hurriedly advancing in the Polish hide industry, Zygmunt as a master in sociology at Warsaw Establishment.

Disillusionment with communism following loftiness denouncement of Stalin by Statesman in 1956, and the pressures of antisemitic persecution compelled authority Baumans to leave Poland confound Israel in 1968, three age later settling in Leeds, Westside Yorkshire, where Zygmunt took pass on the chair of sociology look the university.

It was with respect to that Janina turned to handwriting – her moving testimonies characteristically non-judgmental and free of bitterness.

She is survived by her deposit, whose inseparable companion and admitted muse she was for 62 years, and by their yoke daughters.