A Discussion on Róża Bauminger’s Book "By Picric Acid and TNT"

A discussion on Róża Bauminger’s book "By Picric Acid and TNT"

The book by Róża Bauminger "By Picric Acid and TNT" was the first publication about the forced labor camp organized at the State Ammunition Factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, which during the war was taken over by the German company Hasag (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft). During the seminar we will present the profile of the book’s author and reflect on the place of forced labor within the economic system of the Third Reich. The meeting will include Dr. Marta Janczewska and Dr. Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak.

Róża (Rozalia Frymet) Bauminger was born in 1897 (1902 in post-war documents) in Kraków as the fourth, penultimate child of Salomon and Rebeka (Ryfka) née Korall. She grew up in a family strongly rooted in Jewish tradition; however, her parents cared about educating their children and their efficient functioning within Polish culture. From 1918 to 1925 she studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University.

After finishing her studies she took up teaching work in gymnasium-type schools. Before the outbreak of the war she worked in Vilnius; in mid-August 1939 she came to Kraków and remained there, sharing the fate of Kraków’s Jews under German occupation. She passed through the Kraków ghetto and the camps in Płaszów, Skarżysko-Kamienna and Leipzig; in the latter she lived to see liberation at the end of April 1945.

After the war she connected her professional life with Jewish institutions. In July 1945 she took up work in the provincial branch of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Kraków, and after its transformation — in the Kraków branch of the Jewish Historical Institute — where she worked for over three years. She was one of the most distinguished recorders of testimonies of survivors and non-Jewish witnesses of the Holocaust. In mid-1949 she was employed by the Jewish Cultural Association, first as a secretary, later as a librarian; after the Association merged with the Central Committee of Jews in Poland she moved to the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland (TSKŻ), where she worked until retirement. She died in 1988 in Kraków.