Antoni Koper

Antoni Stefan Koper (September 6, 1906 – June 13, 1990) was active in the Polish resistance movement during World War II. He helped rescue Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto and fought in the Warsaw Uprising. After escaping from a Nazi prison camp, he first fled to London, and then emigrated to the United States. There, he worked for the Defense Language Institute, United States Information Agency, and the Voice of America. He died of cancer in 1990.

Early life and the Invasion of Poland

Antoni Koper was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1906, and was graduated from the University of Warsaw. He had chosen a career in journalism, but the September 1939 Invasion of Poland by Germany found him on the front, fighting with the Polish Army. After Germany annexed Poland weeks later, Koper returned home to occupied Warsaw. Because he was not permitted to work as a journalist under the occupation government, a friend hired him at the municipal tax bureau, where he was tasked with collecting city taxes due from Jews now residing in the ghetto. The tax bureau provided Koper with an Ausweis, an identity card allowing him to move freely about Warsaw, including Warsaw's Jewish ghetto, without fear of being caught in a Nazi roundup and possibly transported to a labor camp.

Occupation of Warsaw During the occupation of Warsaw, Koper and a friend spent their nights publishing underground newspapers and forging travel and identification documents on a secret printing press. In addition to Sophie Marguiles, Koper also hid Bronislawa and Henryk Finkelstein, Dr. Maximilian Ciesieleski, They were among thirteen ghetto refugees who hid in Koper's apartment for various periods of time between 1942 and 1944, When Warsaw fell, the Germans took Koper prisoner.

Koper was president of the Polish Veterans Association in Washington D.C. in December 1981, when martial law was declared in Poland. "We're sitting helplessly on the sidelines. There is no communication, the post office doesn't work, the telephone doesn't work, traveling is impossible. It's unbelievable that in this time and age, the country can be padlocked completely," Koper told a reporter. Before martial law ended, Koper was called out of retirement to work as an editor for Voice of America. Of their visit to Poland, Sophie Koper later remembered, "I did not find my Warsaw."