0 Euro Osvobození Plzně

Zero-euro souvenir notes have been issued across Europe since 2015 under a scheme that allows cultural and heritage organizations to commission legal-tender-format notes — printed to genuine euro security specifications by licensed printers — while carrying no actual monetary value. Oberthur's involvement lends these pieces the same substrate and intaglio quality as circulating currency, which is precisely the point. This example commemorates the liberation of Pilsen in May 1945, when the U.S. Third Army under Patton reached the city — one of the few major Bohemian population centers liberated by Western Allied forces rather than the Red Army.

That distinction carried enormous political weight during the subsequent decades of communist rule, when the American role in the liberation was systematically suppressed in official memory.