0.50 Reichsmarks Dachau Concentration Camp

Camp scrip issued at Dachau was not money in any functional sense — prisoners could not freely spend it, and the canteen goods it nominally purchased were tightly rationed or simply unavailable. The system existed largely to create administrative paperwork that obscured forced labor exploitation from Red Cross inspectors and to give the SS a mechanism for recovering wages paid by private firms using prisoner labor.

The 1944 Dachau series was printed in multiple denominations on distinctively colored paper — pink for the 50 Pfennig — using deliberately crude typography to prevent confusion with Reichsmark currency proper. Surviving examples are disproportionately common relative to the note's grim origin, as many were taken by liberating American troops in April 1945 as evidence or personal keepsakes.