2 Zlotys

This 1946 issue came out of an extraordinary logistical effort: the Polish Security Printing Works had been obliterated during the war, and reconstituting domestic banknote production in Warsaw — a city still largely rubble — was itself a political priority for the new communist-backed government. Getting the presses running again under Narodowy Bank Polski branding was a deliberate assertion of administrative continuity, however fragile that continuity actually was.

Ryszard Kleczewski designed several notes in this immediate postwar series. The watermark security, modest by prewar standards, reflects what was achievable given the state of the rebuilt facility in 1946.