Marian Rejewski

Early life and studies

He was born on 16 August 1905 in Bydgoszcz (then Bromberg), the youngest of seven children of the tobacco merchant Józef Rejewski and Matylda, née Thoms. He attended the classical grammar school in Bydgoszcz and passed his school-leaving examinations in 1923; he knew Latin, Greek, French and English.¹

From 1923 to 1929 he studied mathematics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Poznań. From January to May 1929 he took part in a secret cryptology course run by the Cipher Bureau of the Second Department of the General Staff. In 1929–1930 he studied actuarial statistics in Göttingen, and from 1930 to 1932 he was assistant to Professor Zdzisław Krygowski.^1,3

At the Cipher Bureau

According to the ABW publication, in September 1930 he was assigned to the Poznań branch of the Cipher Bureau, and after it was closed in September 1932 he was employed in section BS-4 (German ciphers) in the Saxon Palace in Warsaw.¹

In December 1932 he broke the cipher of the military Enigma: he reconstructed its mechanism mathematically, using data on the commercial version of the machine, and between Christmas and New Year he read the first messages. Together with Różycki and Zygalski he then went on to recover the daily keys.^1,2

He devised the card catalogue and the cyclometer (1934) and, after the Germans changed their enciphering procedure, the cryptologic bomb. In July 1939, at a meeting in Pyry (Kabaty Forest), the team presented its methods to French and British delegations.^1,2

War

After the September 1939 campaign he was evacuated with part of the Second Department through Romania to France. From September 1939 to June 1940 he worked at the Polish-French centre “P.C. Bruno” in Gretz-Armainvilliers, then in Oran, and from October 1940 to November 1942 at the clandestine centre “P.C. Cadix” in Uzès. According to the AW biography, in the Vichy zone he used the name Pierre Ranaud.^1,2

In January 1943 he crossed into Spain, where he and Zygalski were arrested; released in May 1943, he travelled through Portugal and Gibraltar and reached Great Britain on 3 August 1943.²

In Britain he started as a private in a signals intelligence company at Stanmore-Boxmoor; in October 1943 he became a wartime second lieutenant and head of Section “N”, and in January 1945 a lieutenant. The British did not admit him to work at Bletchley Park.¹

After the war

In November 1946 he declared that he wished to return to Poland and was demobilised. In Bydgoszcz he worked as a clerk, among other places at the Kabel Polski company and in the cooperative sector; from 1949 to 1958 he was kept under surveillance by the UB and the SB, which knew no details of his intelligence work.¹

In 1967 he retired and wrote down his recollections of his work at the Cipher Bureau (1930–1945), which he deposited with the Military Historical Institute; in 1969 he moved to Warsaw. He published 22 works; in 1979 he became an honorary member of the Polish Mathematical Society.^1,3

In December 1978 he received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. He died of a heart attack on 13 February 1980 in Warsaw and was buried with military honours at the Powązki Military Cemetery.^1,2

Significance

A memorial plaque at Bletchley Park (unveiled in 2002) commemorates Rejewski, Różycki and Zygalski as the Polish intelligence mathematicians who first broke Enigma, and their work as a contribution to the Allied victory. In 2019 the Polish Embassy also unveiled a plaque honouring the Polish cryptologists in London, in the church of St Andrew Bobola.^1,4,5