Born a German national, Admiral Józef Unrug commanded the Polish coastal defense during Poland’s 1939 defensive war against Nazi Germany. When he was taken prisoner, his former Imperial German Navy friends came to visit him. Unrug refused to speak German with them, saying that he had forgotten that language in September 1939 the day Germany invaded Poland. As Wikipedia states, “to the irritation of the Germans, Unrug would always insist on having a translator present or communicating in French, when speaking with the Germans, even though he was a native German speaker.’
Unrug died in Lailly-en-Val, France in 1973, and was buried in Montresor, central France. One of his last wishes was to be buried next to his officers the day Poland finally knew peace. Negotiations took some time, but finally, his and his wife’s remains were brought to Poland for the state burial in Gdynia. In October 2018, an official burial ceremony took place.
The official page of the President of Poland described the importance of the event: “The last farewell to Admiral Józef Unrug, Poland’s coastal defense commander during the 1939 defensive war against Germany, is one of the last elements in building a truly free Poland, President Andrzej Duda said at Unrug’s funeral in Gdynia. In accompanying Admiral Unrug on his last journey, we are adding one of the last stones to the fundament of a truly free Poland, on which we will be able to continue building this great structure,” Duda said at Gdynia’s Naval Cemetery.”
