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Adolf Bninski (born August 21, 1884 in Kosowo - 1942) was a Polish agricultural, conservative and royalist activist. He was Voivode of Poznan from 1923-1928 and a member of the Senate of Poland in the Second Polish Republic. In the aftermath of the German invasion of Poland he was the Government Delegate for Poland for the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany. He was arrested by the Germans in July 1941 and killed in 1942.
Biography
Adolf Bninski was born on August 21, 1884 in Kosowo. He studied agriculture at the Jagiellonian University, as well as at the German universities in Munich and Halle. He inheritied significant agricultural lands, and he was a notable agricultural activist in Greater Poland.
In 1918 he became a functionary of the reborn Polish state, first as a commissair for the Lodz region in 1918, then from 1919 to 1920 as a starost of the Sroda County and from 1923 to 1928 he was the voivode of Poznan.
In the political arena, Bninski supported conservative and pro-monarchy views. In the Polish presidential election, 1926, he was the presidential candidate of the Popular National Union (Zwiazek Ludowo-Narodowy), but he lost to Ignacy Moscicki. In 1935, despite his opposition to the sanacja regime, he joined the senate of Poland, and was a senator until 1938.
After the German invasion of Poland he joined the Polish Underground State. In July 1940 he was chosen to be the Government Delegate for Poland for the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany although he did not receive the official nomination from general Wladyslaw Sikorski until December 3. Bninski was arrested by then Germans in July 1941, for refusing to express support for a joint Polish-German anti-Soviet declaration. He was imprisoned in Poznan and tortured and executed on the night of 7 to 8 July 1942. The exact circumstances of the disposal of his body are unknown; according to Zbigniew Mieczkowski he could have even been fed to wild animals (lions).
It was not until 10 October 1942 that Nazi Germany's Foreign Ministry retroactively issued a death penalty for Bninski.
His position as Delegate was taken by Leon Mikolajczyk.
In 1995 he was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle.