Archive | 2023/02/25

Złamanie kodu Enigmy – 90. rocznica

Egzemplarz przedseryjny Enigmy i jedna z pierwszych maszyn szyfrujących, jakie trafiły na wyposażenie armii niemieckiej. W kolekcji Muzeum Historii Polski. Źródło: MHP/T. Nowacki


Złamanie kodu Enigmy – 90. rocznica

Michał Szukała


Pod koniec 1932 r. jeden z najzdolniejszych matematyków zatrudnionych w polskim wywiadzie, Marian Rejewski, pracował nad zadaniem, które w przyszłości miało odmienić losy II wojny światowej. Prawdopodobnie 31 grudnia odczytał pierwszą niemiecką depeszę, do której zaszyfrowania użyto Enigmy.

„Poruszając się wśród pozornego chaosu faktów, badacz usiłuje odnaleźć w nim elementy porządku, określić przyczyny zjawisk i ich wzajemne związki, przełożyć je na możliwie prostą teorię, pozwalającą innym podążyć śladami jego myśli i zweryfikować słuszność rozumowania” – zauważa Marek Grajek, autor książki „Enigma – bliżej prawdy”. W ten sposób można opisać trwającą ponad dekadę pracę polskich kryptografów, którzy dążyli do złamania szyfrów jednej z najbardziej zaawansowanych technicznie maszyn dwudziestolecia międzywojennego.

Niemiecka Enigma była początkowo przeznaczona dla przedsiębiorstw dążących do ochrony swoich tajemnic handlowych. W drugiej połowie lat dwudziestych została wprowadzona do użytku w niemieckich siłach zbrojnych. Polski wywiad natychmiast przystąpił do prób złamania jej kodów. W 1929 r. do tego zadania wyłoniono grupę trzech niezwykle uzdolnionych poznańskich matematyków – Jerzego Różyckiego, Henryka Zygalskiego i Rejewskiego. Głównym autorem sukcesu z ostatnich dni grudnia 1932 r. okazał się ten trzeci, który wykorzystując najdrobniejsze luki w niemieckiej metodzie szyfrowania, wykradziony egzemplarz Enigmy, materiały przekazane przez francuskich sojuszników oraz swoją intuicję matematyczną, opracował metodę łamania szyfru.

InfografikaOdczytanie Enigmy w sylwestra 1932 r. nie oznaczało, że wysiłki Rejewskiego i jego kolegów okazały się tylko sukcesem. Niemcy coraz szybciej komplikowali mechanizm Enigmy, m.in. poprzez zmiany kolejności i liczby wirników oraz połączeń na przełącznicy kablowej.

Niemcy i wywiad francuski zakładali, że odszyfrowywanie Enigmy będzie możliwe jedynie w wypadku zwerbowania do współpracy funkcjonariuszy niemieckiego wywiadu. Tymczasem Polacy aż do 1939 r. odczytywali większość przechwyconych depesz. Ujawnienie tej wiedzy przedstawicielom Wielkiej Brytanii i Francji u progu II wojny wywołało szok tamtejszych wywiadów. Zdaniem historyków dokonania poznańskich kryptologów były kluczowym wkładem w zwycięstwo aliantów nad III Rzeszą.


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How Can Jews Support Ukraine After the Holocaust?

How Can Jews Support Ukraine After the Holocaust?


NATAN SHARANSKY AND BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY


An exchange between Bernard-Henri Lévy and Natan Sharansky, from the recent Tablet event in partnership with the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine.

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Questioner: I know there’s a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians right now —there’s the country that’s been invaded, with innocent children and the women. But as a child of Holocaust survivors, a lot of people that I speak to can’t dredge up much sympathy for the Ukrainians and how they were chewing gum as they shot us in the mass graves at Babi Yar.

Natan Sharansky: Thank you for saying it because it was just a topic that I wanted to raise and there was no time. There’s so many people who died in the Holocaust in my family, and I am the chairman of the Babi Yar Memorial. I’m dealing all the time with the victims. And I hear all the time from very good people and some of my close friends that they have sympathy to the suffering of every child. But they cannot make themselves feel solidarity with Ukraine as a state or Ukrainians as a nation knowing what a terrible history there was there, first with the Chelminitsky pogroms, which were terrible, and of course with the Holocaust. And I can tell you my answer.

First of all, antisemitism is not something which was specific for Ukraine or any other land. Antisemitism is the most ancient hatred, which rises regularly whenever people need to hate the other.

So even if you think about some nice places in the Alps in Switzerland, remember that the whole Jewish community were burnt alive in order to avoid plague there. And if you enjoy traveling to Spain, the thing that you see is Ferdinand and Isabella, big heroes of today’s history of Spain, who exiled half of the Jewish people. Or think about Provence, a great place, I enjoy it there very much. Only think of what Crusaders did there, the terrible massacres of entire Jewish populations.

So if we Jews will start building our relationship with the world on the basis of what they did to us, we should move to another planet.

Second, our sages are giving very good advice. I am not a rabbi, but I was advised to read this comment of Rashi on the chapter when Hagar and Ishmael are sent to the desert, and Ishmael almost dies from thirst. He has no water.

And then God says to Hagar, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll help your son as he is,” and he helps Ishmael. And then the comments of our sages is that the angels of the heavens revolt and said, “Ah, you’re helping him? Don’t you know how many awful things his people will do to our people?” And God says to them, “Now at this moment, is a child innocent or guilty?” And they say “innocent.” So I’ll judge everybody in his time and that’s our way. It means that we have to deal with the people at this time.

The people of Ukraine at this time, not only, as Bernard said, by the way, have the lowest level of neo-Nazis in Europe. You have to understand that when these neo-Nazis that Putin speaks about so much, when they tried to go to election, they didn’t get 1%. They didn’t get one-tenth of 1% of the vote.

And think about many countries in Europe where it is different. And of course half of the Ukrainian government is Jewish, and openly Jewish. And Zelensky is not only speaking about his Jewishness, but about his deep love for Israel. And they were all elected in free elections.

And above and beyond all this, it so happened that God, providence, history, has put Ukraine and its people in the unique position of being defenders of the free world. So let’s judge Ukraine in this time, as God told us.

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QuestionerI agree totally that we have to close an eye about the past of Ukraine, because today what is very important is freedom and democracy.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: No, no, no. That’s not enough. Of course, the questions of democracy and freedom are important. But if the Ukrainians were still the antisemites of the past, which they would have been if they did not have done the work of memory, of mourning and of sorrow, which they did do, I would certainly not support them as much as I do. One of the reasons why I support them with all my heart is because they did the work. Because they looked in front of their past. They considered the crimes of their grandfathers or fathers. They decided though difficult and painful as it is, to look at them in the eyes and to do the work that ensures that such crimes will not to be repeated.

I had the honor to be there to represent my country the day of the inauguration of the Babi Yar Memorial. I’m not a fan of the way the Babi Yar Memorial is conceived and built, but there is a memorial, and I was there. It was the day before the burial of the late President of Israel Shimon Peres. There were the president of Germany, the president of Israel, the president of Poland, President of the EU Donald Tusk, and a few others. And I was representing my president, of France. I was there for a few days before, and I interviewed the leaders of the Jewish communities, the leaders of the parties, people of the civil society, and so on, and so on, and then I delivered a speech there in the name of myself and of my country. You can find it on YouTube.

And what I said, and what I really believed is that there are few examples of a nation doing so thoroughly and so quickly the deep work of digging in the darkest depths of its own crimes, and putting them into light, and doing the job necessary so as not to repeat them. This is Ukraine today. This is Babi Yar.

Another thing which goes in the same sense. I was on the Maidan, the central square in Kyiv, in 2014, during the Revolution of Dignity, the great popular uprising. And as in all popular uprisings, people say exactly what they want. There is an absolute freedom of speech. I spoke twice on the Maidan, once in February, another time in March. And I spent a reasonable amount of time there. I saw and I heard what people were saying, and I tried to read the graffiti which were written on the walls. And as I expected, every wise thing could be read on the walls, like in May ’68 in France. Great slogans, great popular imaginations—and huge stupidities were written as well, of course. As in all moments of complete freedom, everything is said.

I observed a very strange thing. The only stupidity which I did not hear, the only stupid or crazy or mad slogan which I did not read on the walls, was antisemitic slogans. In these moments, February, March of absolute freedom, where the freedom of expression was total, the only free expression which did not pop out was the antisemitic one.

This was very strange. Maybe such slogans were written after I left, maybe they were there before I came. But I can tell you that during these two months, all craziness except this one were all present, and all wise courageous words also. And among the craziness, this one was not heard. And as a result, as Natan just said, when the extreme right and antisemitic parties run for election, they have the lowest levels of approbation and votes in the polls of all Eastern and Central Europe, and much less than in France. The extreme right-wing party is 15 times weaker in Ukraine than it is France, to our shame.

On the opposite side, if you look at Russia—I’m sorry, but it‘s a fact—this work which is half done, maybe three quarters done by Ukraine, is barely touched. They are very far from understanding of their own criminal past. They are very far away on the road. Since 1989 and ’91 Russia did not even start understanding her own past. The work is not even on the way.

By the way, last point, I don’t know if it is well known here, when the Russians say that the Red Army liberated, or contributed to the liberation of Europe from Nazism, it is true. But what they never say is that inside the Red Army you had all components of the Soviet Union, including Ukrainians, of course. Those who liberated the camp of Auschwitz were the First Ukrainian Front, which was not only composed of Ukrainians, but a majority of whom were Ukrainians.

And the soldier who had the terrible dark privilege to enter first into Auschwitz, to first look into what was left of the eyes of the detainees of Auschwitz, was a Ukrainian Jew called Anatoliy Shapiro, I think. He was a tankist, and he was a Ukrainian Jew. He was one of the first to enter and to liberate Auschwitz.

So all of that has to be taken into account when a Jew tries to reflect on this situation and to act properly. And when I decided to engage myself so strongly, to devote all my time, to put part of my life at stake in the cause of Ukraine, all that I’m saying now was in my mind.


Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and spent nine years in the Gulag for his human rights activities.


Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of more than 30 books including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, and The Empire and the Five Kings. His most recent book, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope, was published on October 25, 2021 by Yale University Press.


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In Latest Challenge Israeli Rugby Coach Calls for Formal Inquiry Into ‘Discriminatory’ Actions by South African Rugby Union

In Latest Challenge Israeli Rugby Coach Calls for Formal Inquiry Into ‘Discriminatory’ Actions by South African Rugby Union

Shiryn Ghermezian


Athletes from South Africa and the US competing in the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Photo: David Roberts via Wikimedia Commons.

An Israeli rugby coach submitted a formal complaint this week against the South African Rugby Union (SARU) in response to its decision to exclude the Tel Aviv Heat rugby team from a competition taking place next month in South Africa.

The complaint is the latest in a series of mounting legal challenges to the South African sporting body after the group withdrew its invitation to the Israeli team to participate in the Mzansi Challenge beginning on March 24.

“Rugby is a game divorced from politics,” wrote Joshua Schewitz, head coach of the Rishon LeZion Owls men’s rugby club. “The players, coaches, and supporters love the game due to the nature of the game, which is to play the game hard and then shake hands when it’s finished. Bringing politics into the game is contrary to rugby ethos.”

SARU announced on Feb. 3 that “we have listened to the opinions of important stakeholder groups and have taken this decision to avoid the likelihood of the competition becoming a source of division, notwithstanding the fact that Israel is a full member of World Rugby and the IOC.”

The move was announced by a slew of Israeli and South African Jewish advocacy organizations after SARU faced ample amount of pressure to disinvite the Israeli team from the competition from supporters of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Schewitz, who previously lived in South Africa and played rugby at the University of the Witwatersrand and with the Pirates Rugby Club in Johannesburg, wrote in his formal notification that “it appears that the decision to exclude the Tel Aviv Heat team was taken on political grounds, pandering to the bigotry of unidentified ‘stakeholder groups.’”

He is asking SARU to launch a formal enquiry into the actions taken against Tel Aviv Heat or to refer it to a judicial officer or committee for adjudication.

Schewitz further noted that SARU’s actions breach the regulations of the World Rugby governing body, which also apply to SARU. “The cancellation of the invitation to Tel Aviv Heat was plainly discriminatory by reason of national or ethnic origin” and should therefore be classified as “misconduct,” he argued.

The coach also pointed out that “one of the adverse consequences of inserting illegitimate political considerations” into the sport of rugby “has been to harm the careers of several young South African players, who are developing their talents at Tel Aviv Heat and will be denied the opportunity of playing in this competition if the cancellation decision is not rapidly revoked.”

Schewitz received assistance in preparing the notification from the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). SAFI recently submitted to SARU paperwork asking for information about the meetings with stakeholders who the rugby club said they consulted before the decision to axe Tel Aviv Heat was announced. UKLFI separately wrote to SARU’s president and World Rugby about the move against Tel Aviv Heat, arguing that the decision violates SARU’s constitution.

“Sports bodies have rules preventing discrimination and political interference,” said UKLFI’s Chief Executive Jonathan Turner in a released statement. “It is in the interest of all engaged in sport that these rules are complied with. We welcome the public-spirited intervention of Mr Schewitz seeking to enforce them and hope that this will be achieved in time for Tel Aviv Heat to play in this competition.”

Earlier in February a New Zealand-based lawyer filed a legal complaint with the World Rugby Council also in regards to SARU’s decision against Tel Aviv Heat.


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