20 Zlotych

This note belongs to the first postwar zloty series issued under the new communist-aligned government, replacing the wartime and occupation-era currency with something that looked, deliberately, like a fresh start. The Polska Wytwórnia Papierów Wartościowych had been partially destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and was still rebuilding capacity when production resumed — the early postwar output from this facility shows the constraints under which it operated.

Wacław Borowski was one of the few prewar engravers to continue working there into the People's Republic period. His involvement in the series gives it a technical continuity with interwar Polish printing traditions that the political moment otherwise tried hard to erase.