100 Livres

The Banque de Syrie et du Liban was a French concessionary institution, but by 1942 Free France had little control over its own printing arrangements. With metropolitan France under German occupation and the Levant in political flux following the Allied campaign against Vichy forces in Syria and Lebanon the previous year, this note was produced in Jerusalem under British auspices — an arrangement that would have been unthinkable in peacetime.

The Government Printer, Palestine handled emergency currency work for several Allied-aligned authorities during this period. That a nominally French bank's highest-denomination note was pressed off in Jerusalem tells you more about the war's disruptions than any single historical summary could.