Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of Poland by a political purge in 1968 engineered by the Communist government of the Polish People's Republic and forced to give up his Polish citizenship to move to Israel. Three years after he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971 and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman was one of the world's most eminent social theorists, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.

Bauman was born to non-observant Polish Jewish parents in Poznań, Poland, in 1925. When Poland was invaded by Nazi Germanyand by the Soviet Union, in 1939, his family escaped eastwards into the USSR. Bauman then enlisted in the Soviet-controlled First Polish Army, working as a political instructor. He took part in the battles of Kolberg (now Kołobrzeg) and of Berlin. In May 1945 he was awarded the Military Cross of Valour. After World War II he became one of the Polish Army's youngest majors.

According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, from 1945 to 1953 Bauman was a political officer in the Internal Security Corps (KBW), a military unit formed to combat Ukrainian nationalist insurgents and part of the remnants of the Polish Home Army. Later Bauman worked for military intelligence from 1945 to 1948. However, the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown, as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated.