Kazimierz Gaca

Kazimierz Gaca alias Jean Jacquin (1920-1997) was a Polish cryptanalyst and officer. Before World War II, he worked at the Cipher Bureau , decoding radio messages encrypted by the German military using their Enigma machine. After WWII, he worked for the French intelligence bureau and retired in the south of France.

Biography Early life, activities before WWII Kazimierz was born from Aleksandra and Franciszek Gaca. He was the youngest of four brothers, Zbigniew (1908-1951), Czesław (born 1909) and Adam (born 1910). In Bydgoszcz, the family lived at 26 Chrobrego Street.

In 1938, while studying mathematics at the University of Warsaw, followed his twelve-years-older brother Zbigniew and joined the Polish Cipher Bureau or Biuro Szyfrów (BS).

Second World War Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Kazimierz, like all BS employees, had to leave his country. Carrying a replica of the Enigma machine, it took five months for him to transfer to Romania then Yugoslavia and Greece. In Piraeus, Gaca could board the ship "Warszawa" and reach Marseille on 20 February 1940. Following the German offensive against France in June 1940, the team of Gustave Bertrand initially fled to French Algeria to escape the advancing Wehrmacht. Soon a new clandestine location managed by Bertrand was settled: code-named Cadix, it was located near Uzès, then in the free southern zone of France (Zone libre). Kazimierz (who took the alias of Jean Jacquin, born in La Roche sur Yon) and his colleagues moved back there. Lieutenant-colonel Gwido Langer, liberated in mid-1945 from the Schloss Jezeří near the Flossenbürg concentration camp, was sent to a Polish signals camp in Kinross, Scotland. Colonel Gano, the chief of the Polish Section II in Britain had been convinced that the failure of their evacuation to Spain was due to Langer's hesitation and lack of nerve. Gwido Langer died in Scotland on 30 March 1948; Major Maksymilian Ciężki was also interned at the Schloss Jezeří and sent after liberation to Kinross. He died in United Kingdom on 9 November 1951, after living the last three years on subsidies from the National Assistance Board; Antoni Palluth and Gaca were forced to work in the Heinkel aircraft factory in Oranienburg. The plant was partially destroyed by an Allied bombing raid on 18 April 1944: a bomb fragment fatally wounded Antoni, while Kazimierz Gaca, standing fifty meters away, survived.

Activities post WWII After the war, Gustave Bertrand now Brigadier General, invited in 1947 Gaca and Sylwester Palluth, a cousin of Antoni Palluth, to join the French intelligence department he was leading.

On 07 June 1950, Kazimierz married Monique Isambert, the daughter of the general's chauffeur. The ceremony was also attended by his brother Zbigniew, just back from United Kingdom.

He outlived all his friends and colleagues from the BS and was able to witness the fall of communism in his homeland of Poland in 1989, where he never returned to.

Kazilierz Gaca wrote his memoirs in the mid-1980s and died in France in 1997.

Orders For his services, Kazimierz Gaca was made knight in the French order of the Legion of Honour.