Kazimierz Gaca

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Kazimierz Gaca alias Jean Jacquin (*  1920 in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), †  1997 or around 2009 ) was a Polish cryptanalyst and officer . Before the Second World War , he worked in the Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro") deciphering the radio messages that the German military encrypted using their Enigma key machine .

Life

Such Polish Enigma replicas served the cryptanalysts in their work. Kazimierz Gaca “smuggled” one specimen during his five-month escape from Poland to France via Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece between 1939 and 1940.
The zone libre , which was unoccupied until November 1942, temporarily offered Biuro Szyfrów a new location.

Kazimierz was born the youngest of four sons of Aleksandra and Franciszek Gaca after his brothers Zbigniew, Czesław and Adam.

In 1938 he followed his brother Zbigniew, who was twelve years older than him , and joined BS4 as the youngest employee at the time , the BS department responsible for German ciphers in Warsaw, more precisely in the Kabaty forest of Pyry . After the German attack on Poland in September 1939, he, like all BS employees , had to leave his country, fled via Romania and found asylum in France . In the Château de Vignolles ( German castle Vignolles ) in Gretz-Armainvilliers , about 30 kilometers southeast of Paris, he found a new base along with many of his colleagues. There he was able to continue his successful cryptanalytic work against the Enigma in the " PC Bruno ", a secret intelligence service facility of the Allies . 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 (zone libre) .  

In March 1943, while attempting to flee to neighboring Spain from France, which was now completely occupied by German troops , he was captured along with his friends and colleagues Edward Fokczyński and Antoni Palluth . They were subsequently interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Fokczyński died of emaciation there in 1944. Palluth tragically died in April 1945 when the Heinkel aircraft works , where he was forced to work as a concentration camp prisoner, were partially destroyed by an Allied bombing raid. The moment Palluth was fatally injured by a fragment of a bomb, Kazimierz Gaca was standing only fifty meters away. He survived.

After the war, in 1947, he joined, like Sylwester Palluth, a cousin of Antoni Palluth, the French secret service department headed by Général Gustave Bertrand . In 1950 he married Monique Isambert, the daughter of the general's chauffeur , and stayed with her in the south of France .

For his services he was accepted into the Légion d'Honneur ( Legion of Honor ). He survived all his friends and colleagues from the BS and was able to witness the fall of communism in his native Poland in 1989 , to which he never returned.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 , p. 9.
  2. ↑ Hanka Sowińska: Życie szyfrem pisane ( German  “Life written with a cipher” ) in Gazeta pomorska from January 7, 2005 (Polish), accessed on April 24, 2019.
  3. ↑ Inconsistent information: (1997) According to Hanka Sowińska: Życie szyfrem pisane ( German:  “Life written with a cipher” ) in Gazeta pomorska from January 7, 2005 (Polish), accessed on April 24, 2019, applies: “Kazimierz Gaca umarł w 1997 roku. ”(2009) According to Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 , p. 283, he was "89" years old.
  4. ^ Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 , p. 141.
  5. ↑ Anna Stefanicka: Komunikat Instytutu J. Piłsudskiego w Londynie No. 130. (Polish and English), December 2018, ISSN 1369-7315, pp. 48-49, pilsudski.org.uk (PDF; 650 kB), accessed on 24. April 2019.
  6. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 , p. 330.
  7. ^ Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 , p. 283.
personal data
SURNAME Gaca, Kazimierz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Bydgoszcz (Bromberg)
DATE OF DEATH 1997 or around 2009