 | Bletchley Park TourThe Polish contribution In their early days at Bletchley Park, without an example of the Enigma machine in front of them, the codebreakers were unable to work out the order in which the keys were attached to the electrical circuits. But help was at hand. From the early 1930s, a group of Polish mathematicians - Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rózycki and Henryk Zygalski - had been working to unravel Enigma, even managing to reconstruct a machine. When Rejewski and his colleagues first broke Enigma, the cypher altered only once every few months. But by 1939, with the threat of war looming, it was changing at least once a day. In July 1939, the Poles passed on their knowledge to the British and the French at a secret meeting near Warsaw. A few weeks later, they delivered two replicas of Enigma machines that they had built. One arrived at Bletchley Park, giving the codebreakers the crucial help they needed. To mark the 60th Anniversary of that historic rendezvous, and to give thanks for the Polish contribution to the cracking of Enigma, Bletchley Park hosted a Polish Festival in July 1999. This has become an extremely popular annual event, with large numbers of Anglo-Polish and British people from all over the country coming to Bletchley to join in the celebrations. A few days prior to the 2000 Festival, a special ceremony took place at the Palace on the Water in Warsaw. The families of the three outstanding Polish cryptanalysts were presented with the Great Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Poland's Rebirth) by Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek in recognition of an achievement that many consider to be Poland's single greatest contribution to the Allied victory in WWII. And in September 2000, it was Britain's turn to present an Enigma machine to Poland. On an official visit to the country, HRH The Duke of York presented a machine to Mr Buzek as a "symbol of Britain's gratefulness and thanks". The 2001 Polish Festival saw the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at the Park. |
