Epilog

© The old walls of Teutonic Castle faded away... replaced by a war and destruction. The humanity once again turned into a beast...

On September 1, 1939. Nazi tanks rolled over Poland.

On September 5, 1939, as it became clear that Poland was unlikely to halt the German invasion, The Cipher Bureau's German section, BS-4, received orders to destroy part of its files and evacuate essential personnel.

On September 17, 1939. Red Army invaded Poland from the other side. Over 14,000 of Polish officers were imprisoned by soviets. Within six months, over 4,000 were executed in Katin woods near Smolensk, approximately 6,000 were drowned, locked in barges, in cold waters of White Sea, and 2,000 were executed near Minsk and buried in yet unknown place. General NKVD (Kombrig) Serov was in charge of Polish solution. From Polish territory, occupied by NKVD troops of Colonel Siemion Moysheyevich Kirvoshein, 1,700,000 of poles, women, men and children, were sent to Kazakhstan and Siberia on a one way trip. The NKVD general, Ivan Serov, responsible for this exercise in barbarism, issued orders to divide all families before packing them into railroad cars. In late 1950, very few returned to Poland. My youth memories are filled with sounds of endless lists of names recited over the radio, as the survivors and relatives were looking for each other. The ancestral lands of Poland is still occupied by Russians.

On September 17, 1939, upon the Soviet Army's entry into eastern Poland, BS-4 personnel crossed the border, with other Polish military and government personnel, into Romania. Subsequently they made their way to France, where at "PC Bruno," outside Paris, they continued breaking German Enigma ciphers in collaboration with the Ultra operation at Bletchley Park, fifty miles northwest of London, England. In the interest of security, the allied cryptological services corresponded, by teletype, in Enigma. Braquenié often closed messages with a "Heil Hitler!"

Soviet NKVD col. Semyon Moiseyevich Krivoshein salutes cringingly his comrade at arms and war crimes - Nazi Gen. Heinz Guderian, at the military parade crowning the Nazi-Soviet slaughter of Poland. Brzesc nad Bugiem, Sep. 22, 1939. While Krivoshein, a Soviet Jew, celebrated the occasion wining and dining his Nazi friend in a most cordial atmosphere of brotherhood and mutual understanding, his brethren in Nazi-occupied Polish towns and villages were herded by the Nazis unceremoniously, and driven away - soon to meet their fate. The Poles could only watch in horror - they themselves already fell victim of war criminals such as Krivoshein and Guderian. And the worst was yet to come.

As late as December 1939, when Lt. Col. Langer, accompanied by Captain Braquenié, visited London and Bletchley Park, the British asked that the Polish cryptologists be turned over to them. Langer took the position that the Polish team must remain where the Polish Armed Forces were being formed - on French soil. Interestingly, the mathematicians might conceivably have ended up in Britain already in September 1939; but when the trio went to the British embassy in Bucharest, Romania, they received an apparent brush-off from a preoccupied British ambassador or military attaché.

Triumphant Adolf Hitler on Warsaw's Saxon Square, before Polish General Staff building (the Saxon Palace) and Bertel Thorvaldsen's statue of Prince Józef Poniatowski, during victory parade in 1939. Little did Hitler realize that the doom of his Thousand-Year Reich had been sealed seven years earlier - just as he was about to take power - in the very building he is facing. The Cipher Bureau's German section, BS-4, was housed in the Polish General Staff building (the stately 18th-century "Saxon Palace") in Warsaw until 1937.

March, 1940, representatives of NKVD and GESTAPO met for one week in Zakopane, for the coordination of the pacification of resistance in Poland.

April-June, 1940, massive executions of Polish POWs and nationals in Soviet occupied zone.

1940
Latvia, and Estonia are attacked by Soviet Union.

August, 1940
Beria's agent kills Trotsky in Mexico City.

Trepper with his partners Mendel Strolnikoff and Joseph Joanovici set up shop in Paris, France. This time working with GESTAPO as they fed desinformation to Allies while rising as black market stars.

Following the capitulation of France to Germany in June 1940, the PC Bruno Poles were evacuated to Algeria, in North Africa.

On October 1, 1940, they resumed their cryptologic work at "Cadix," near Uzès in unoccupied southern, Vichy France under the sponsorship of Gustave Bertrand. They worked there until, a little over two years later, the "Free Zone" was occupied by the Germans.

August 17, 1941. The Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, a treaty between Soviet Union and Poland was signed in London.

On November 8, 1942, Bertrand learned from the BBC that the Allies had landed in North Africa ("Operation Torch"). Knowing that the Germans planned in such an eventuality to occupy Vichy France, on November 9 he evacuated Cadix. Two days later, November 11, the Germans marched into southern France.

1 August to 2 October 1944, the Warsaw Uprising, a futile and desperate action by AK to regain control of Poland already betrayed by Allies. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army approached Warsaw. Although the Soviet army had reached a point within a few hundred metres across the river from the city on September 16, the Red Army stopped on the east bank of the Vistula River thus permitting the Germans to crush the uprising at will, their attacks against 4th SS Panzer Corps and 46th Panzer Corps stopped at that point. The Polish Air Force made 223 sorties using bases in faraway Italy, and lost 34 aircraft, but the effect of these airdrops were mostly psychological. The United States Air Force (USAF) planes did not join the operation. The Allies specifically requested the use of Red Army airfields near Warsaw on 20 August but were refused by Stalin on 22 August (he referred to the insurgents as 'a handful of criminals'). Soviets even shot down a number of aircrafts which carried supplies from Italy. After Stalin's objections to support for the uprising, Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt on 25 August and proposed sending planes in defiance of Stalin and to 'see what happens'. Roosevelt replied on 26 August, 'I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join you in the proposed message to Uncle Joe'. British complied preventing more flights of Polish Air Force.

Prolog   Cavalry   Players   Trip   Meeting   Airport   Boat ride   Castle   Visiting   Bad Harzburg   Epilog   Executions   Photos   The End