Edward Fokczyński

Edward Fokczyński (* before 1900; † 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was one of the four founders of the AVA-Fabrik , a small electrotechnical company in Warsaw that existed from 1929 until the beginning of the Second World War and special electromechanical devices, especially for the Polish Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro") produced. The most important devices that this small company produced were replicas of the German Enigma rotor key machine from 1934 onwards, as well as the special cryptanalytic devices such as the cyclometer and bomba needed to decipher it .

Life

Edward Fokczyński was self-taught. After a few years of primary school education, he lived on Wilsonplatz in Warsaw (slightly north of the center). In 1927 he opened a small workshop for radio technology in the Warsaw New World Street , not far from the headquarters of the Polish General Staff in the Saxon Palace (Polish: Pałac Saski ) . He received from the local cipher office BS , in the person of Captain Maksymilian Ciężki , whom he knew from their time together from 1919 to 1922 in the Polish army, from time to time smaller orders for the production of special electromechanical and radio equipment. In 1929, on the initiative of Fokczyński and Antoni Palluth as well as the two brothers Leonard Danilewicz and Ludomir Danilewicz, the Wytwórnia Radiotechniczna AVA (German: Funkechnische Fabrik AVA) emerged from this workshop . Shortly afterwards, in the same year, they changed the company headquarters and moved to new premises in the southern Warsaw district of Mokotów , which lies between the inner city and the Kabaty forest, which later became so important for them and the world (see also: Meeting from Pyry ). The new company address was now Stepinska Street No. 25 (Polish: Ulica Stepinska 25 ).

Shortly afterwards, in September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland , Edward Fokczyński, like almost all employees of the BS and the AVA plant, had to leave his country, fled via Romania and initially found asylum in France, where he and many others of his colleagues in " PC Bruno ", a secret Allied intelligence facility near Paris, was able to continue his successful work against the Enigma. With the German offensive against France in June 1940, he had to flee again from the advancing Wehrmacht and found a new location (camouflage name: "Cadix" ) near Uzès in the free southern zone of France .

After the occupation of the previously free southern zone of France in November 1942 , he saw himself forced to flee further and tried, on the night of March 10th to 11th, 1943, together with his colleagues Gwido Langer , Maksymilian Ciężki and Antoni Palluth to escape across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain . Their escape was betrayed and they were captured. As a result, Edward Fokczyński was first brought to Perpignan and later interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . There he died of emaciation in 1944. His friend and colleague Antoni Palluth was killed in the same concentration camp in an Allied bombing raid in April 1945.

Posthumous honor

In October 2010, Edward Fokczyński was posthumously awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta .

literature

• Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, pp. 178-193. ISSN  0161-1194 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk : Enigma - How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two . Edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk, Jerzy Straszak, Enigma - How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code . Hippocrene Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7818-0941-X .
• Władysław Kozaczuk: Secret Operation Wicher . Bernard et al. Graefe, Koblenz 1989, Karl Müller, Erlangen 1999, ISBN 3-7637-5868-2 , ISBN 3-86070-803-1 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk: Under the spell of Enigma . Military publishing house, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-327-00423-4 .
• Hugh Sebag-Montefiore : Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .

Web links

• Portrait photo by Edward Fokczyński. Retrieved May 5, 2015
• Group photo from France around 1941. Edward Fokczyński is third from the left.
• Fokczyński and his machine Interview with Teresa Szóstko, the daughter of Edward Fokczyński, in conversation with Adam Białous (Polish). Retrieved May 5, 2015
• IEEE Milestone First Breaking of Enigma Code by the Team of Polish Cipher Bureau, 1932-1939 (English). Retrieved May 5, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, p. 185. ISSN  0161-1194 .
2. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 330 ISBN 0-304-36662-5
3. ↑ Anna Stefanicka: Komunikat Instytutu J. Piłsudskiego w Londynie No. 130. (Polish and English), December 2018, ISSN 1369-7315, p. 48, pilsudski.org.uk (PDF; 650 kB), accessed on April 24, 2019 .
4. ↑ Fokczyński and his machine ( memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Interview with Teresa Szóstko, the daughter of Edward Fokczyński, in conversation with Adam Białous (Polish). Retrieved May 5, 2015