Mieczysław Zygfryd Słowikowski

Mieczysław Zygfryd Słowikowski (born February 25, 1896 Jazgarzew near Warsaw , † July 29, 1989 in London ), nom de guerre Rygor was a Polish officer and head of the Polish secret service in North Africa.

Life

Słowikowski joined the Polish Army in 1918 and was deployed in the Polish-Soviet War from 1919 to 1921 . He graduated from the Polish Army in 1925 and worked for the Polish Ministry of Defense . He was employed in the general staff of Józef Piłsudski for four years . In 1937 he became a diplomat in the Polish consulate in Kiev in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , his administrative district was southern Russia. During the attack on Poland , Słowikowski was accredited as embassy secretary there, and on August 24, 1939 he heard the announcement of the Hitler-Stalin pact on the radio .

After the German Wehrmacht and the Red Army occupied Poland in September 1939, Słowikowski fled to southern France and worked there as an intelligence officer for the Polish government- in- exile in London . After Philippe Pétain's surrender in June 1940, Słowikowski organized a network with Major Wincenty Zarembski (Tudor) in Toulouse to evacuate Polish soldiers from France. In July 1941 Słowikowski was commissioned to set up and manage the Polish exile intelligence service in French North Africa called Agency Africa .

The Agency Africa with headquarters in Nouvel Hôtel du Palmier 6, rue Arago in Algiers , dealt with the trade of oats and messages , including Major Maksymilian Ciężki aka Mr. Miller transmitter Mathew operation. Other transmitters were operated by Major Wincenty Zarembski Tudor and Captain Gwindo Langer aka Luc Whirlwind . The US government maintained diplomatic relations with the Vichy regime with Robert Murphy and Somerville Pinkney Tuck and delivered goods to North Africa , the use of which twelve additional Vice-Consuls (the so-called "12 Apostles") observed. Słowikowski reported that the gasoline that was delivered was used by the German Africa Corps . The network that Słowikowski had installed in North Africa reported extensively on the military strength and the locations of the French army in North Africa, which was subordinate to the pro-German regime in Vichy. The information provided was relevant to Operation Torch . Robert Murphy later stated that Słowikowski's information was the real motivation for the Allied invasion of North Africa.

The Polish government-in-exile decorated Major Słowikowski with the Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland in Gold with Swords in August 1943 . On March 28, 1944, the American General Jacob L. Devers decorated Słowikowski with the American Legion of Merit . The British government awarded him the Order of the British Empire . In September 1944 Słowikowski traveled to Great Britain, where he headed the Polish infantry training center in Crieff until 1947 . He later worked as a metalworker in the UK.

literature

• W tajnej służbie: polski wkład do zwyciestwa w drugiej wojnie światowej (In the Secret Service: The Polish Contribution to Victory in World War II) Mizyg Press, 500 pages, 1977.
• Major-General MZ Rygor Slowikowski, In the Secret Service: the Lighting of the Torch , translated by George Slowikowski and Krystyna Brooks, with foreword by MRD Foot , London, The Windrush Press, 1988.
• Tessa Stirling et al. , Intelligence Co-operation between Poland and Great Britain during World War II , vol. I: The Report of the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee , London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2005.
• CODENAME RYGOR, The spy behind the allied victory in North Africa, 24/07/2010.
• Stanford University: Slowikowski (Mieczyslaw Zygfryd) papers , Correspondence, memoranda, reports, radio and telegraph dispatches, charts, and lists, relating to Polish intelligence operations in French North Africa and the evacuation of Polish troops from France in 1940.
• Jean Medrala: Les Réseaux De Renseignements Franco-Polonais 1940–1944 , Editions L'harmattan, 2005.

Movies

In the shadow of Casablanca, WDR 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Witold Biegański, Stanislaw Okęcki, Polish resistance movement in Poland and abroad, 1939-1945 , PWN - Polish Scientific Publishers, 453 SS 216., 1987
2. ^ Hal Vaughan, FDR's twelve apostles
3. ↑ arte , The Shadows of Casablanca ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2010 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.