Koper Antoni

Koper, Antoni-Stefan After returning to Warsaw from the front in 1939, Antoni-Stefan Koper, aware he would not find work in his chosen profession (journalism), took an office job with the municipal tax authorities, which allowed him to enter the ghetto. On his visits to the ghetto, Koper brought with him documents, forged in an underground printing press, with the help of a friend, and distributed them among Jews, enabling them to escape to the Aryan side of the city. In the summer of 1942, after the large-scale Aktion in the ghetto, Koper offered to shelter his friend, Fanny Margulies, whose entire family had been deported to Treblinka, in his apartment in central Warsaw. After helping her escape, Koper brought Margulies to his apartment where, to her astonishment, she discovered that Koper was already sheltering Bronisława and Henryk Finkelstein, and Dr. Maximillian Ciesielski, also fugitives from the ghetto. Between 1942-1944, a number of Jews passed through Koper’s apartment for various periods, including children who were later placed in Catholic orphanages. Despite the danger, threats, and attempted extortion, Koper continued with his humanitarian activities. With the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, all the Jewish refugees fled with the rest of Warsaw’s population, and survived until the liberation. Koper, who participated in the uprising, was captured by the Germans, but escaped across the British front to join the Polish army. Margulies worked as a nurse in a hospital in Germany, treating the casualties of the Warsaw Uprising, and was liberated by the British Army. After the war, Koper and Margulies married and moved to London, and later to the United States, where Koper became a professor. On July 16, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Antoni-Stefan Koper as Righteous Among the Nations.