Footnotes

'PHONE BLETCHLEY 320, AND ASK FOR ME, OR MR. TURING': THE PAPERS OF A BLETCHLEY PARK CRYPOGRAPHER WORKING UNDER ALAN TURING ON THE GERMAN NAVAL ENIGMA CODES.

German-born Rolf Noskwith (formerly Noskowitz) came to Ilkeston, Derbyshire in 1932 with his parents Chaim (Charles) and Malka (Maria), East-European Jews hoping to escape the economic conditions in Germany and the burgeoning Nazi party, and bringing with them their hosiery business, Charnos, which was to become a household name. He was educated at Nottingham High School and then read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Fluent in German and with an interest in puzzles and crosswords, he was soon recommended by the University Recruitment Board to join the Officer Training Corps in Artillery Survey Work. After being deemed medically unfit to serve, however, he persevered with his wish to work "in the decoding department" – a copy of his letter to the Foreign Office survives in the archive – and in March 1940 was offered a position by J. R. Jeffreys. These papers show that merely four days later, Gordon Welchman was obliged to write to rescind the offer, his application having been vetoed on the grounds that he was born in Germany and therefore a security risk. Undaunted, he applied again, and by May 1941 the veto had been lifted and he joined the staff of Bletchley Park the following month shortly after his 22nd birthday. He was met at the station by Hugh Alexander, deputy head of Hut 8, and discovered on arrival that he was to work under Alan Turing on German Naval Enigma in a team including Joan Clarke, Turing's one-time fiancé. In October 1941 Noskwith was responsible for the breakthrough in finding the crib for the complex Offizier code and in February 1942 worked on breaking the new Shark four-rotor Enigma machine. By June 1943 they had developed the technical capability to keep abreast of German intelligence, with Noskwith one of just four codebreakers still working in that section.

In June 1944, as the archive shows, Noskwith made a donation to the United Palestine Appeal which was set up to support the rescue of Jews from Europe responding to a request for funds: "...we are writing to every single Jew in the place, both inside and outside the Park..." says the appeal for funds, "...we are confident that no Jew will fail to respond...". On Noskwith's death, Robert Hannigan, then Director of GCHQ was inspired to write an appreciation of Noskwith and the 'remarkable' group of Jewish staff at Bletchley Park, who played a role 'out of all proportion to the size of the British community in Britain at the time' (see Hannigan, R., 'The Jewish codebreakers who won the war', The Jewish Chronicle online).

In his reminiscences of Bletchley, Noskwith admitted that at the end of the war 'I could not tear myself away from decoding' and stayed on at GCHQ at Eastcote in north-west London, working on Japanese and Yugoslav intercepts. In 1946 he left to join the family business on a six-month trial. He stayed on and became chairman in 1952. Under his watch the company expanded and developed new technologies, introducing the first seam-free stocking in 1961 and collaborating with leading fashion designers, the company employing some 3,000 people at its peak. In 1957 he married Annette Greenbaum, the daughter of Franz Greenbaum, Turing's psychiatrist, and had one son. At his death in 2017 he was the last surviving member of Turing's team. The papers, with the pages of Turing's mathematics also included in this sale, derive from his home in Nottingham.