10 Pfennig Lodz Ghetto 2nd emission

Lodz was the largest ghetto established on Polish soil, and its internal scrip — issued under the authority of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the controversial "Eldest" appointed by the Nazi administration — was the only ghetto currency produced in magnesium, a wartime metal substitute so brittle and prone to oxidation that surviving examples in any condition are genuinely scarce. The 1942 emissions replaced an earlier aluminum coinage after aluminum was redirected to German military production.

Rumkowski's currency was functionally a tool of isolation: it could purchase nothing outside the ghetto walls and served to strip deportees of convertible assets before transport. Most pieces that entered circulation were destroyed with the ghetto itself in 1944.