Commissioned by Jerry Klinger of The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, UK branch, and AJEX a new plaque at Kendal Road, Marble Arch, commemorates the life and contributions of the writer and cryptographer Leopold (Leo) Marks, MBE.
The plaque is positioned near the entrance to the block of flats – Leo Marks lived at: No. 410 Park West - when he was Chief of Codes at Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Baker Street during the Second World War.
Leo Marks was born in 1920 and headed the coding office at the famous but secret SOE HQ in Baker Street which supported resistance agents in Europe in WW2. Born into a devout Jewish family in London, his father was Benjamin Marks of the famous ’84 Charing Cross Road’ bookshop featured later in a Hollywood film. It was in the bookshop that Leo became interested in codes by deciphering the price codes pencilled inside book covers by his Father.
Called up in 1942 he was seen to have a great skill in coding and was sent to SOE, whose overall head was the Jewish heritage banker, Sir Charles Hambro. Leo tutored and briefed most of the agents including many famous for their bravery such as Yeo Thomas, the Norwegian Telemark saboteurs, Noor Inyat Khan, as well as the very large number of Jewish agents such as Denise Bloch, Marcus Bloom, Isidore Newman and Muriel Byck. He knew them all. Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower (later US President) said his team’s work at SOE helped shorten the war by 3 months and saved countless lives.
Among Leo’s innovations were code poems, and also the one-time pad, both of which increased code security in radio messages to and from agents. He wrote many of the poems himself including the beautiful classic and famous one for Violet Szabo, ‘The Life That I Have’. He also introduced many methods of shortening messages and discovered that most of the Dutch agents had been compromised and insisted they be shut down to save lives.
Post War, Leo wrote plays, films and an astonishing book about his life: ‘Between Silk and Cyanide’, not actually security cleared for publication until 1998. As AJEX Archivist, Sugarman was privileged to be able to interview him just before he died in 2001, but true to form he gave little away.
