20 Zlotys WW2 Polish Government in Exile

Bank Polski had evacuated its gold reserves and senior staff westward in September 1939 before the Germans reached Warsaw. This note was designed and printed in London — by Edmund Dulac, the Franco-British illustrator better known for postage stamps and book illustrations — as currency for a government that had no territory to circulate it in. Vacek's engraving brought a level of technical refinement that arguably exceeded anything Bank Polski had issued domestically.

Actual distribution was extremely limited. Some notes reached Polish Armed Forces in the West; the majority remained in storage. The 1939 series was never legal tender in liberated Poland, the communist government having established its own monetary authority in the interim.