Józef Unrug, German Admiral

“A German-born admiral spent 6 years in Nazi POW camps and never spoke a single word of German to his captors—not even to his own cousin.”
Admiral Józef Unrug was born Joseph von Unruh in Brandenburg, Prussia. He spoke German as his mother tongue, served in the Imperial German Navy during World War I, and commanded submarines for the Kaiser.
But in 1919, everything changed.
When Poland regained independence after 123 years of partition, Józef made a choice that would define the rest of his life. He renounced his German commission, left his homeland, and traveled to Poland—a country that had no navy, no warships, not even a proper port.
He didn’t just join Poland’s military. He bought a ship with his own money and donated it to become one of Poland’s first naval vessels. By 1925, he was Commander of the Fleet, speaking Polish with a thick German accent, building a navy from absolutely nothing.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Admiral Unrug commanded the coastal defenses on the Hel Peninsula. Outnumbered ten to one, he fought for a month while Warsaw fell. Finally, on October 2, 1939, he surrendered with honor and became a prisoner of war.
That’s when his real resistance began.
The Germans moved him between camps—Colditz Castle, Murnau, Woldenberg. Former colleagues from his German Navy days visited, appealing to old friendships. They offered him rank, promotions, command positions. Admiral Dönitz himself reportedly tried to recruit him back to the Kriegsmarine.
Then his own cousin came to visit.
Major General Walter von Unruh greeted Józef warmly in German, expecting a conversation in their shared native tongue.
Instead, Unrug replied in French.
Confused, his cousin asked why he was speaking French.
Józef looked at him calmly and said: “On September 1, 1939, I forgot how to speak German. I am a Pole and a Polish officer.”
The Germans were stunned. This was a man who had commanded their submarines, who understood every word they said, whose family had served Prussia for generations.
But for six years—through multiple camps, countless recruitment attempts, visits from family members—Admiral Unrug never spoke German again. When Germans addressed him, he demanded translators. When they insisted he must understand, he replied only in Polish or French.
Language became his weapon of resistance.
He refused to give his captors even a syllable of recognition. Always correct, always formal, always cold. His fellow prisoners drew strength from his unbending example. The Germans found him increasingly frustrating—he wouldn’t break, wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t even acknowledge their shared past.
In April 1945, American forces liberated his camp. But the news was devastating: Poland had fallen under Soviet occupation.
Unrug chose exile over compromise. He moved to the United Kingdom, then Morocco where he worked on fishing boats, then France. A rear admiral working manual labor rather than accept a communist government or a pension he felt his men were denied.
His final wish was to be buried in free Poland, among his men. But he set a condition: he would not return until his colleagues murdered during Stalinist terror were properly rehabilitated.
He would not return until Poland was truly free.
Admiral Józef Unrug died in France on February 28, 1973, at age 88. His wife Zofia died in 1980. They were buried together in France, alongside other Polish patriots who died far from home.
Decades passed. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. Poland regained sovereignty. The murdered officers were finally found and honored.
And Admiral Unrug could come home.
On September 24, 2018—forty-five years after his death—his coffin was carried aboard the Polish Navy frigate ORP Kościuszko. On October 2, 2018—exactly seventy-nine years to the day after his surrender at Hel—a state funeral was held in Gdynia.
Admiral Józef Unrug was laid to rest at Oksywie Naval Cemetery, among his officers and sailors, in the free Poland he had waited his entire life to see.
He had finally come home.
Sometimes the most powerful act of resistance isn’t violence or sabotage—it’s the quiet, absolute refusal to compromise on who you are. Józef Unrug never raised a weapon in his final war. He simply refused to speak the language of his enemy.
And in that silence, he said everything that needed to be said.

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