Considered one of the founders of Polish Navy's logistical services, he was murdered by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyn massacre.

Xawery Czernicki was born on 16 October 1882[1] in a szlachta family in the village of Giedejki (Giedeikiai) in the Oshmyansky Uyezd of the Vilna Governorate (present-day Ashmyany District.

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).

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.

There, in the village of Deraźny, he was ambushed by the Red Army with a group of Polish Navy officers, after the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany in the invasion of Poland.