Xawery Czernicki Rear Admiral Xawery Stanisław Czernicki ( 1882 – 1940 ) was a Polish engineer , military commander and one of the highest - ranking officers of the Polish Navy . Considered one of the founders of Polish Navy ' s logistical services , he was murdered by the Soviet NKVD during the Katyn massacre . Xawery Czernicki was born October 16 , 1882 in a szlachta family in the village of Giedeikiai near Vilna ( modern Vilnius , Lithuania ) . After graduating from a local gymnasium in 1901 , Czernicki joined the Imperial Naval Engineering School in Kronstadt . In 1905 he graduated from the shipbuilding faculty and joined the Russian Navy in the basic officer ' s rank of michman . The following year he was admitted as the Second Lieutenant ( later First Lieutenant ) and served as an engineer in the St . Petersburg naval base . In 1910 he became the head of a small naval shipyard in Sretiensk , where he authored several river monitor s . Until 1914 he also served as a deputy engineer and then lead engineer of the " Gangut " - class battleships " Sevastopol " and " Petropavlovsk " . Promoted in 1913 to the rank of Captain , until the end of World War I Czernicki served as the lead hull designer in the naval shipyard in Reval ( modern Tallinn , Estonia ) . In 1917 he was promoted to Navy Lieutenant Colonel and the following year he resigned his post . In 1919 he returned to Poland and volunteered for the Polish Navy . He was admitted as the chief of Technical Services of the Vistulan Flotilla , the first unit of the newly - reborn Polish naval forces , created even before Poland regained its Baltic shore . During the Polish - Bolshevik War Czernicki served as the commanding officer of the Modlin Fortress inland naval base . In 1925 he became the head of a commission supervising the construction of Gdynia naval base and the following year he also started to head a commission supervising the construction of ORP " Burza " , ORP " Wicher " , ORP " Wilk " , ORP " Ryś " and ORP " Żbik " in France . Promoted to the rank of " Komandor " , he returned to Poland in 1932 and became the Chief of Services and the Deputy Commander of the Chief of Polish Navy in the Ministry of Military Affairs . In 1938 he was again promoted , this time to the rank of Rear Admiral . After the invasion of Poland in 1939 , Czernicki was evacuated from Gdynia to Warsaw and then eastwards to the area of Pińsk and Brodów . There , in the village of Deraźny , he was overrun by the Red Army with a group of Polish Navy officers , after the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany in their war against Poland . Transferred to Równe ( modern Rivne , Ukraine ) , they were to be sent home . However , instead they were arrested by the NKVD and sent to various prisons and camps in the USSR . Czernicki , after a brief stay in Talitsa , was transferred to the NKVD special camp of Kozelsk . He was murdered in the spring of 1940 , aged fifty - seven , in what became known as the Katyn massacre . After the fall on the Soviet Union in 1989 , Xawery Czernicki became one of the patrons of the Polish Navy . He is the name - sake of the Polish Navy Depot ( 1993 ) , the ORP " Kontradmirał Xawery Czernicki " logistical ship ( 2001 ) and the X . Czernicki ' s Grand Prix prize , awarded every year during the Balt - Military - Expo in Gdańsk .