Wacław Kopisto
Polish elite World War II soldier
Major Wacław Kopisto a.k.a. Wacław Jaworski, nom de guerre Kra (8 February 1911 – 23 February 1993) was an officer of the Polish Army in interwar Poland, infantry captain, and an underground soldier of the elite Polish Cichociemni unit (the Silent Unseen) during the occupation of Poland in World War II.
Military career
In 1934–35 Kopisto attended the Podchorąży military academy in Tarnopol. In 1939 he fought in the September Campaign defending Poland around the town of Podkarpacie. Following Poland's defeat by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he escaped to Hungary, then to France, and finally Great Britain, where he became a Polish Armed Forces in the West parachutist. He was deployed back to Poland on the night of 2 September 1942 in the area of Grójec.
Kopisto took part in several spectacular military actions in Volhynia against the occupying German forces as well as the collaborationist units of the UPA. On 20 January 1943 he was involved in the rescue of Polish prisoners of war from Wachlarz of the Armia Krajowa who were being held and tortured at the Pińsk prison. The first platoon of Cichociemni rescuers drove undetected through the prison gate in an Opel car, while dressed in the SS uniforms and shouting at the guards in German. Once inside the compound, they shot the commandant who refused to cooperate. They opened the prison cells and released the inmates who were loaded onto a lorry they had requisitioned and they drove away ten minutes before the German reinforcements arrived. Two days later, on 22 January 1943 the SS executed 30 local civilian hostages in retaliation.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wacław Kopisto” as polish elite World War II soldier. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as polish elite World War II soldier. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16460116. VIAF identifies the subject as 132113712. The Library of Congress control number is nr99014454. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1993, 1934 and 1939.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Wacław Kopisto”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Wacław Kopisto primary sources, Wacław Kopisto archive and Wacław research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wacław Kopisto”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Wacław Kopisto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.