Piotr Smoleński

Piotr Smoleński alias Pierre Smolny (* around 1900 in the Russian Empire ; † January 9, 1942 in the Mediterranean near the Balearic Islands ) was a Polish cryptanalyst before the Second World War .

Life

The zone libre , which was unoccupied until November 1942, temporarily offered the code breakers of Biuro Szyfrów a new location.

Map of the Mediterranean. The red arrow indicates the starting port of Algiers and the sinking point of the Lamoricière near Menorca . The port of destination was Marseille .

Little is known about his life. He was a cryptanalyst in Unit BS3 of the Polish cipher office Biuro Szyfrów (BS) , which was headed by Jan Graliński and dealt with the deciphering of Russian ciphertexts . The BS had its headquarters in the Saxon Palace (Polish: Pałac Saski ) in Warsaw .

In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland , Smoleński had to leave his country and, like most of his colleagues from the BS , fled via Romania and found asylum in France. There the Poles were initially able to continue their work in the " PC Bruno ", a secret Allied intelligence facility near Paris, before they had to flee again from the advancing Wehrmacht in June 1940 after the German offensive against France . Together with his colleagues, he found a new location (code name: “Cadix” ) near Uzès in the zone libre (picture) , the free (unoccupied) southern zone of France.

Even before the Wehrmacht carried out Anton in November 1942 and occupied the whole of France, the BS, together with the French allies from the Deuxième Bureau, under the direction of Louis Rivet, built a branch as a safe retreat in Algiers on the African side of the Mediterranean opposite France who from time to time translated the Poles and French by ship. In the Algerian representation, Smoleński and his friend and boss Graliński were the only code experts for Russian ciphers.

On January 6, 1942, both of them boarded the French steamship Lamoricière , together with other colleagues from the BS , such as Jerzy Różycki , who was responsible for German ciphers ( Enigma ) . This got into a severe storm near the Balearic Islands and sank .

Piotr Smoleński was not among the few who were saved. He probably drowned shortly after noon on January 9, 1942.

literature

Dermot Turing : X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press , Stroud 2018, ISBN 978-0-75098782-0 .

Web links

Photo of the Lamoricière

Individual evidence

^ Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-75098782-0 , p. 10.
^ Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-75098782-0 , p. 199.

personal data
SURNAME	Smoleński, Piotr
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Smolny, Pierre (code name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Polish cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH	Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH	January 9, 1942
Place of death	Mediterranean Sea near the Balearic Islands

[1] Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-75098782-0 , p. 10.

[2] Dermot Turing: X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-75098782-0 , p. 199.