10 Zlotys Ending of II World War

Issued on the 60th anniversary of VE Day, this coin belongs to a long-running NBP commemorative program that has documented Polish wartime history with unusual consistency since the 1990s. Poland's position in the Second World War narrative is singular — the country that triggered the formal Allied declarations of war in 1939 was excluded from the 1945 victory celebrations in London under Soviet pressure, its government-in-exile sidelined as Stalin's client regime took hold in Warsaw.

That political exclusion still shadows official Polish commemoration of 1945, and the coin's very existence reflects an ongoing national reckoning with what "victory" meant for a country that emerged from the war under foreign occupation of a different kind.