The ceremony will take place on Sunday, November 11. The program includes:

  • 10:00 a.m. – a ceremonial scouting assembly at the Polish Underground State Monument (the defensive walls at Kubika Street)
  • 10:20 a.m. – scouts’ march to the park named after Scoutmaster H. Bonin at Tyrankiewiczów Street
  • 10:45 a.m. – unveiling of a commemorative plaque dedicated to Scoutmaster H. Bonin.

We have reported many times that the park at Tyrankiewiczów Street will be named after Scoutmaster Hubert Bonin. Let us recall the matter. The justification for the resolution adopted by the Bolesławiec City Council reads:

The Bolesławiec District Headquarters of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association, named after the Grey Ranks, submitted a request to the Bolesławiec City Council to name the park located between Parkowa, Podgórna and H.W. Tyrankiewiczów Streets after SCOUTMASTER HUBERT BONIN. The request received a positive opinion from the Infrastructure and Construction Committee of the Bolesławiec City Council.

Scoutmaster Hubert Bonin was born on September 13, 1912, in Bydgoszcz. In 1929, he graduated from a commercial school and then continued his education at a school of pharmacy and chemistry. That same year, he joined the 7th Bydgoszcz Scout Troop named after Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, making a promise to which he remained faithful throughout his life.

In 1934–1935, he completed his compulsory military service (because of his profession, he was assigned to the sanitary company of the Military Hospital in Toruń), and later worked at a Bydgoszcz drugstore while leading his original scout troop.

In 1938, the troop under his leadership received the Banner’s Master Troop diploma. In March 1939, he was appointed assistant scoutmaster.

From September 1, 1939, he fought in the ranks of the “Pomerania” Army. As a soldier, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and held in prisoner-of-war camps in Łowicz and later Łódź.

Released from the camp, he returned to Bydgoszcz, where on May 19, 1940, after taking an oath, he became a member of the Grey Ranks and the Union of Armed Struggle. From March 1943, he was forced to work at a plant producing explosives. This was punishment for the entire family’s refusal to sign the Volksliste.

He passed information about the factory to the underground resistance, and as a result it was blown up in August 1943 as part of sabotage activities.

On August 8, 1944, he was arrested together with his brother. During the investigation, both were tortured by the Bydgoszcz Gestapo and, a month later, placed in Stutthoff concentration camp. In the final period of the war, during the evacuation of the camp, he and other prisoners were placed below deck on a barge that was to be sunk in the Baltic Sea. His brother met that fate, but he managed to survive.

He continued the evacuation on foot, in a column of emaciated prisoners, until the day of liberation.

After recovering and staying in a transit camp until November 1945, he returned to Bydgoszcz. On February 17, 1946, he arrived in Bolesławiec with his future wife, Jadwiga. On April 1, 1946, he opened a drugstore there and soon afterward founded the first scout troop in Bolesławiec. The troop founded by Brother Bonin chose Prince Józef Poniatowski as its patron.

Unfortunately, the patron’s figure proved ideologically too unacceptable to the political authorities in the new postwar reality. Hubert Bonin was therefore emphatically and unequivocally told that the patron had to be changed to Gustaw Morcinek.

Agreeing to the change did not protect the troop leader from being removed soon afterward from work with young people. In any event, he did not see himself in the Scout Organization operating within the Polish Youth Union. The organization imitated the Soviet Pioneer movement and used symbols foreign to Polish scouting, and he did not want to submit to this indoctrination.

Brother Bonin returned to leading his beloved “One” only after Stalin’s death and the subsequent political and social changes, which led to the National Congress of Scout Activists in Łódź in December 1956. The congress restored much of the scouting program, as well as traditional scout badges and symbols.

Prewar instructors were also allowed to maintain official contact with young people. He was a delegate to scouting congresses.

Until 1978, he worked at the Bolesławiec Vials and Ampoules Factory “Polfa,” after which he retired. As soon as circumstances became favorable, he returned to active instructional work, organizing camps for the 1st Bolesławiec Scout Troop even in the 1990s and independently leading the unit.

Many older residents of Bolesławiec remember those troop parades perfectly; the troop always held them before setting out on camping trips and hikes. During Easter, scouts in regulation uniforms also stood honorary guard at the Lord’s Tomb. Scoutmaster Hubert Bonin held various positions in the district, even serving as deputy commander of the entire ZHP organizational unit.

He was always involved in the city’s social affairs, especially scouting. As a former member of the Grey Ranks, a soldier in the September Campaign and the Home Army, he was always ready to serve Poland with his knowledge, experience and commitment. He was a great yet exceptionally modest man.

By Resolution No. XLIII/430/05 of December 28, 2005, the Bolesławiec City Council made Hubert Bonin an honorary citizen of Bolesławiec.

Hubert Bonin died on March 26, 2008.

(Prepared on the basis of the Bolesławiec Yearbook).

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