This is where you will find biographies of historical figures and of people whose activities are publicly described in sources: documents, court records, academic studies.
We do not write about private individuals and do not repeat unverified accounts. For living people we confine ourselves to facts that have been officially disclosed.
memoirist
Philip Hagenbeck
Author of the two-volume memoir “Zwyczajny szpieg” (An Ordinary Spy; 2019, 2020), whom the publisher presents as an intelligence officer and a veteran of long foreign missions.
b. 1951
Aleksander Makowski
Officer of the intelligence service of the Polish People's Republic (Department I of the MSW, 1972–1990), author of spy novels published by Czarna Owca.
writer; in service until 2006
Robert Michniewicz
Former Polish intelligence officer (23 years of service, 11 of them abroad), in the final period with the Foreign Intelligence Agency; in 2006 he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Author of spy novels.
1905–1980
Marian Rejewski
Mathematician and cryptologist at the Cipher Bureau. In December 1932 he broke the cipher of the military Enigma and read the first messages.
1909–1942
Jerzy Różycki
Mathematician and cryptologist at the Cipher Bureau, co-author of the breaking of Enigma and author of the clock method.
b. 1956
Vincent V. Severski
The pen name of Włodzimierz Sokołowski, an officer of the intelligence service of the Polish People's Republic (Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, MSW), and later of the UOP and the Foreign Intelligence Agency, who left the service in 2007 with the rank of colonel. Author of spy novels, including the “Nielegalni” (The Illegals) series.
b. 1947
Viktor Suvorov
The pen name of Vladimir Rezun, a former officer of Soviet military intelligence (the GRU) who, according to his own accounts in press interviews, defected to Great Britain in 1978. Author of books about the GRU and the Second World War.
1932–2005
Vladimir Volkoff
French writer of Russian origin. According to the AFP news agency, before his literary debut he was an officer in the French secret services; he made his name with the spy novel “Le Retournement” (1979; in English “The Turn-Around”).
writer; in service until 2013
Piotr Wroński
Former intelligence and counterintelligence officer – in the SB and, after vetting, in the UOP and the Foreign Intelligence Agency, which he left in 2013 with the rank of colonel. Author of novels about the inner workings of the security services of the Polish People's Republic.
1908–1978
Henryk Zygalski
Mathematician and cryptologist at the Cipher Bureau, co-author of the breaking of Enigma and creator of the perforated sheets named after him.
● This section grows in batches: new cards are added together with their sources.
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