Human life consists of happy and sad events. So it is with money. You can write happy things and sad things about it. And today I'm going to write about something very sad.

During World War II, the Nazis gradually murdered their victims, step by step. First the victim was identified, then marked. Then the victim was excluded from public life, robbed, concentrated in the ghetto, and finally taken to a concentration camp, only to be physically murdered.

The money I present today is the material evidence of these events.

The Jewish victim sent to the Terezín ghetto (Therezienstadt in today's Czech Republic) was robbed of all the money she had in her accounts or in cash. Instead of this money, she received these vouchers.

What could a victim have bought with this "money"? Nothing. Nothing at all. It was completely useless, fake money, just to give the appearance of normalcy. It was meant to be shown to the world.

Artistically, the products were quite successful. They were mostly preserved in perfect condition. Because they didn't circulate at all.

I spoke to people who went through the Terezín ghetto. They said that life there was terrible, but it was life. But further east, there was no life, only a slow or fast dying.
This five-mark voucher is from the Lodz ghetto (Łodz in Polish, Litsmannstadt in German, now in Poland). It shows that it has been circulated.
I've talked to the survivors. This coin could buy, for example, 1 kg of potato skins. There was nothing better to eat in the ghetto.

While some in the German Reich were starving to death or dying in gas chambers, some allies of Nazi Germany were minting commemorative coins in silver. I want to showcase these coins in my next article. Those coins will already belong to the #silvergoldstackers. I couldn't spare this article as an introduction.

I promised myself to write at least 24 articles by January 25. This is the eleventh.