Alfred Balachowsky

Who was Alfred Balachowsky?

Alfred Serge Balachowsky was a French entomologist born in Russia. He specialised in Coccoidea but also worked on Coleoptera. Balachowsky worked at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. In 1948 he was elected president of the Société entomologique de France.

Balachowsky was part of the Prosper Network in Paris during WWII, a spy network run by the British SOE. After the network was infiltrated and betrayed, Balachowsky was arrested and ultimately imprisoned at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp outside Weimar, Germany. Sent to Camp Dora on February 1, 1944, he was brought back to Buchenwald May 1 of the same year to work developing a vaccine for typhus. He also went to work helping the various underground groups inside the camp and established a network of contacts who fed him information from the camp's commanders. Along with Eugen Kogon, Balachowsky was instrumental in the survival of several British SOE officers who were among a group sent to Buchenwald for execution.