News:

Sign up for the monthly zoom events by sending a PM with your email address to Hitesh

Main Menu

Poland: Warsaw Pact Banknotes on Display

Started by Bimat, August 22, 2016, 04:21:31 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Bimat

Poles display cold-war banknotes for use in event of war with west

Agence France-Press in Warsaw
Friday 19 August 2016 18.33 BST

Top secret cold war-era banknotes printed by Warsaw Pact nations for potential use in captured western territories have been shown publicly in the Polish capital for the first time.

Codenamed E-17, the crisp notes were issued in the 1970s and kept locked in chests deep in the bowels of Poland's central bank. They were classified as top secret until 2015.

"This is most likely the only series of its kind in Europe ... now shown to the world for the first time," Piotr Woyciechowski, head of Poland's PWPW national mint, told reporters on Friday.

He said there was reason to believe that in the event of war, the notes were intended for circulation in areas that could possibly be captured, including Denmark, the Netherlands and West Germany.

Emblazoned with the skylines of several Polish cities, the notes range in value from one to 2,000 zloty and will be on public display at the national mint in Warsaw as of next year.

Created by the Soviet Union in 1955 as a counterpoint to the west's Nato military alliance, the Warsaw Pact grouped its satellite states in eastern Europe, but crumbled with the USSR in 1991.

Source: The Guardian

Image Caption: A sheet of 2,000 Polish zloty banknotes that were given the codename E-17. Photograph: Marcin Obara/EPA
It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. -J. K. Rowling.

Figleaf

Why would occupation notes be in Zloty ???

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

chrisild

Hello AFP - the PWPW is not a "mint". They make paper money, security documents etc. but no coins. As for what those notes could have been used for, I looked and came across these two texts in Polish ...

http://www.pwpw.pl/Aktualnosci/2016/08/banknoty-z-czasow-prl.html
http://www.dziennikzachodni.pl/serwisy/historia/a/ujawniono-banknoty-okupacyjne-na-wypadek-wojny-z-nato-zdjecia,10533306/

... which thanks to Google's translation tool I could understand at least to some extent. Note these two sentences: "Series money was ready to issue and had to replace the existing PRL means of payment. After the eventual destruction of PWPW production would be moved to a different location." That is one explanation, the use in occupied territories would be another one. The first one makes more sense to me. :)

Christian