Antoni Koper
| Antoni Stephan Koper | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 6, 1906 Warsaw, Poland |
| Died | June 13, 1990 (aged 83) Arlington, Virginia, US |
| Allegiance | |
| Service/branch | |
| Years of service | 1939–1947 |
| Rank | Lieutenant |
| Battles/wars | |
| Awards | Yad Vashem Award |
| Memorials | Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations |
| Spouse(s) | Sophie Margulies Koper |
| Relations | Peter Koper (son) |
| Other work | |
Antoni Stefan Koper (September 6, 1906 – June 13, 1990) was active in the Polish resistance movement during World War II and served as a lieutenant in the Polish Home Army. 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.
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 Ausweiss, 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.
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. During the day, instead of collecting taxes, Koper would use his Ausweiss to visit Jewish friends in the ghetto, to whom he smuggled such luxuries as soap and Portuguese sardines, as well as the forged papers needed to escape to the Aryan side of the city.
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