The Museum of the Second World War recieves an Enigma machine

On 11 October 2011 in the History Meeting House in Warsaw, the Internal Security Agency deposited a German Enigma encrypting machine at the Museum of the Second World War. It will be shown in the permanent exhibition.

During the event, Dr Marek Grajek, author of Enigma. Bliżej prawdy (Enigma: Closer to the Truth) demonstrated how the machine operates.

Arthur Scherblus, who invented the machine shortly after the First World War, intended for it to be used for correspondence by large industrial concerns. After the machine was modified and improved, it began to be used by the German army. The Germans believed that no one would be able to decipher its code. But in 1932 three Polish mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, working at Section BS-4 of the Cipher Bureau of the General Staff of the Polish Army unscrambled it. Their 15-person office included Edward Fokczyński, who put together a technical team that researched and tested devices designed by cryptologists.