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Home , Bletchley Park, Cipher Bureau (Poland), Cyclometer, Henryk Zygalski, Marian Rejewski

The patron of NCSC

According to the Decision of the Minister of National Defense of February 4, 2020, the National Cyber Security Centre was given a name after Jerzy Witold Różycki.

The above decision was based on a prevalent belief that Jerzy Różycki took a prominent place in the tradition of through his special contribution to the area of cryptology. That puts him among the greatest world cryptologists of the 20th century.

Różycki was one of three most pivotal scientists who broke the German -machine .

Side by side, and also worked with him in the lineup. From 1932, these scientists were employees of the Polish . After the outbreak of World War II, Polish cryptologists sustained their work in and Great Britain. Jerzy Różycki perished in the in 1942 during his trip from Algiers to France.

Jerzy Witold Różycki was born on July 24, 1909 in Olszana. In 1926 he passed his matriculation exam at Secondary School in Wyszków. Later on, he became a student of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Poznań University. As a student, he demonstrated unique logical and linguistic skills, especially in German language. Zdzisław Krygowski (his promoter) was one of those those who perceived that.

In 1929, the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Poznań was involved in the enterprise of the Bureau of the 2nd of the General Staff of the Polish Army. This initiative was aimed at searching for mathematically-skilled people with a special predisposition to do cryptological work. It was primarily related to breaking ciphers and reading the content of its reports.

Strona 1 Jerzy Różycki, then a third-year student, was in a group of twenty-odd students of the Institute of Mathematics, who was tasked to solve the realistic Reichswehr dispatch encrypted with the most difficult of the known ciphers of the First World War. That was the test. The task was efficaciously accomplished by three people merely: Różycki, Rejewski and Zygalski.

Shockingly, they presented the accurate solution after only a few hours. A positive result of this test opened the door to their further careers.

In 1932 Różycki got his first master's degree in mathematics at Poznań University. The same year he started working as a civilian in the – 's unit, together with his fellows: Rejewski and Zygalski. From that moment they were almost inseparable. Their work was secret and their duties were strictly confidential. Różycki operated under gigantic pressure. Despite that, he revealed incredible patience for tedious repetition of the same activities thousands of times.

At the end of 1932, Różycki was assigned with task related to the theoretical foundations of breaking Enigma ciphers: independently and autonomously he developed a method, which was first described by the American cryptologist William Frederic Friedman in the 1920s in "Index of coincidence". The catalog of Enigma objects was developed by cryptologists the following year – they made it with their own constructed .

Despite the work overload in the context of acceleration of German arms, in 1937 Różycki got another master's degree in geography at Poznań University. In 1938, Różycki's achievements earned him the Silver Cross of Merit. He also stabilized the family situation by marriage with Maria Barbara Majka.

As a result of 's attack on Poland, the Cipher Bureau was evacuated from . Różycki took his wife and child to Brest. Rejewski and Zygalski traveled alone. For Różycki, a further travel meant a separation from his family, which made him feel very sorry. From , they came to and continued their cryptological work for the French General Staff, working several hours a day.

In 1940 Różycki was transferred to Algiers. He returned to France after a few months. Until the second half of 1941, he continued his work on Enigma ciphers. He also managed to decipher the German telegraph system with Rejewski and Zygalski. As a result, a number of information about the activities of the German police was revealed.

In the summer of 1941, Różycki was transferred to Algiers once again, where he supervised the memos sent by the Germans and Italians. At the turn of 1941 and 1942 he was ordered to return to France.

On January 9, 1942, he died in a maritime disaster of a steamer sailing to in the Balearic region. He never met his wife or son again. The investigation revealed that the disaster was a consequence of bad weather conditions and a poor quality of coal used to propel the ship. Jerzy Różycki’s death was a tragic loss for Allied intelligence.

Strona 2 On September 6, 2019, figurative urns with soil from places related to the deaths of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski were solemnly placed in the sarcophagus in the crypts of the National Pantheon in Saint Peter and Paul Church in Cracow, Poland. The decision to place a sarcophagus in the pantheon with three urns, none of which contained human remains, was an unprecedented exception.

The urn of Jerzy Różycki contains a sand from the Balearic region, collected by his son accompanied by the representatives of the Polish Embassy in . Because of his tragic death as a result of catastrophe, Różycki did not have any symbolic burial place ever before. Thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of National Defense, the NCSC and the National Pantheon Foundation, a symbolic burial place was created. This paid a tribute to this outstanding figure in an appropriate way.

The ceremony in Cracow was attended by the closest members of the cryptologists' families: Mr. Jan Różycki (a son of Jerzy Różycki), Mrs. Janina Sylwestrzak (a daughter of Marian Rejewski) and a niece of Henryk Zygalski – Mr. Maria Bryschak, as well as the representatives of the General Staff of the and the National Cyber Security Centre. British writer - Sir was also present at the ceremony. Sir Turing is a nephew of - a famous cryptologist, creator of informatics, who during the war continued the work of Polish mathematicians in Park near .

Strona 3