Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto scrip, 10 mark note
Offwhite rectangular paper scrip with a graphic design in green ink. The face has a watermark with a pattern of ornate linked chains of varying sizes. The serial number in orange ink is in the upper left corner. The denomination 10 is in the lower left corner in bold font and in the upper right in a green square. There is a 1.75 inch left margin, then a rectangle with a curved upper left corner with a background of interlocked Stars of David with a large Jewish star in a circle in the upper left corner. Across the center is the textual denomination and German text. The back has a blank 1.75 inch margin, then a rectangle with a pattern of interlocked Stars of David. There is German text in the upper left corner and below the rectangle and a 7-branched candelabrum within the lower left corner. The denomination 10 in bold font is outside the rectangle at the lower left corner; above this, near the upper right corner, is a Star of David outline in a black square.
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The scrip was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by Ariel Cardoso.
overall: Height: 2.875 inches (7.303 cm) | Width: 6.125 inches (15.558 cm)
10 (zehn) mark receipt issued in the Łódź ghetto in Poland in May 1940. Nazi Germany occupied Poland on September 1, 1939; Łódź was renamed Litzmannstadt and annexed to the German Reich. In February, the Germans forcibly relocated the large Jewish population into a sealed ghetto. All currency was confiscated in exchange for Quittungen [receipts] that could be exchanged only in the ghetto. The scrip was designed by the Judenrat [Jewish Council] and includes traditional Jewish symbols. The Germans closed the ghetto in the summer of 1944 by deporting the residents to concentration camps or killing centers.