Re: “Bletchley story nears its final chapter,” column, Jan. 5.
Without wanting to take anything away from the work of the three women who worked at Bletchley on the Enigma code and whose stories were carried by the Times Colonist over the past year-and-a-half, or of Alan Turing, or any of the 10,000 codebreakers during the Second World War, it is only fair that the following supplementary information is also taken in consideration.
The Enigma code was first deciphered and broken in the early 1930s by cryptanalysts from Poland, who, in July 1939, realizing the looming danger of impending war with Adolf Hitler, shared their knowledge with the French and British intelligence services.
Only in this century have the Poles slowly begun to receive international recognition for this accomplishment. In 2002, British authorities unveiled a monument in Bletchley Park, England, commemorating the three Polish cryptographers who decoded Enigma.
As the Polish ambassador to Ottawa wrote in 2007: “It is time that we acknowledge once and for all the groundbreaking effort by brilliant Polish mathematicians in decoding Enigma,” without which even the invasion of Normandy would not have been possible.
Alberdina Roosegaarde Bisschop
Victoria
