The Israeli ambassador to Poland, Zvi Bar, called Bauman's comments "half truths" and "groundless generalizations." He compared the Israeli West Bank barrier to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands of Jews died in the Holocaust. In a 2011 interview in the Polish weekly Polityka, Bauman criticised Zionism and Israel, saying Israel was not interested in peace and that it was "taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts". After his appointment, he published almost exclusively in English, his third language, and his reputation grew.įrom the late 1990s, Bauman exerted a considerable influence on the anti- or alter-globalization movement. There he intermittently also served as head of the department.
In 1970, he moved to Great Britain, where he accepted the chair of sociology at the In 1968, he went to Israel to teach at Tel Aviv University. He had to give up Polish citizenship to be allowed to leave the country. Bauman, who had lost his chair at the University of Warsaw, was among them. The March 1968 events culminated in a purge that drove many remaining Communist Poles of Jewish descent out of the country, including those intellectuals who had fallen from grace with the Communist government. įaced with increasing political pressure connected with a political purge led by Mieczysław Moczar, the Chief of the Polish Communist Security Police, Bauman renounced his membership of the governing Polish United Workers' Party in January 1968. But after his former teacher, Julian Hochfeld, was made vice-director of UNESCO's Department for Social Sciences in Paris in 1962, Bauman did in fact inherit Hochfeld's chair. Owing to this he was never awarded a professorship even after he completed his habilitation.
Initially, Bauman remained close to orthodox Marxist doctrine, but, influenced by Georg Simmel and Antonio Gramsci, he became increasingly critical of Poland's Communist government. Bauman went on to publish other books, including Socjologia na co dzień ("Everyday Sociology", 1964), which reached a large popular audience in Poland and later formed the foundation for the English-language text-book Thinking Sociologically (1990). Published originally in Polish in 1959, a revised edition appeared in English in 1972. While at the London School of Economics, where his supervisor was Robert McKenzie, he prepared a comprehensive study on the British socialist movement, his first major book. and in 1954 became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, where he remained until 1968. During the period of unemployment that followed, he completed his M.A. As Bauman did not share his father's Zionist tendencies and was indeed strongly anti-Zionist, his dismissal caused a severe, though temporary estrangement from his father. In 1953, Bauman, already in the rank of major, was suddenly dishonourably discharged, after his father had approached the Israeli embassy in Warsaw with a view to emigrating to Israel. While serving in the Internal Security Corps, Bauman first studied sociology at the Warsaw Academy of Political and Social Science. He admitted that joining the military intelligence service at age 19 was a mistake although he had a "dull" desk job and did not remember informing on anyone. In an interview with The Guardian, Bauman confirmed he had been a committed Communist during and after World War II and had never made a secret of it. īauman in the uniform of major of Internal Security Corps (1953) However, the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown, as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated. Īccording to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, from 1945 to 1953 Bauman was a political officer in the Internal Security Corps (KBW), a military intelligence unit formed to combat the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the remnants of the Polish Home Army. After World War II he became one of the Polish Army's youngest majors. In May 1945, he was awarded the Military Cross of Valour. He took part in the Battle of Kolberg (1945) and the Battle of Berlin. Career ĭuring World War II, Bauman enlisted in the Soviet-controlled First Polish Army, working as a political instructor. In 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, his family escaped eastwards into the USSR. ( May 2020)īauman was born to non-observant Polish Jewish family in Poznań, Second Polish Republic, in 1925.
0 kommentar(er)
