Catalog
5 Oka
| Issuer | Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1944 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 Oka |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Central oval vignette contains a standing armed resistance fighter flanked by a burning village at left and harvesting farmers at right, rendered in a dark intaglio-style engraving on a green guilloche underprint. Large numeral '5' appears on both left and right margins. Greek inscriptions in bold letterpress run across the top, with manuscript signatures and a printed date line at lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Plain text note face bearing the full bond/loan text in Greek, set in letterpress within a border of repeating wheat-ear ornaments. A circular violet control stamp is applied at centre-left. The denomination '5' appears in a small cartouche at lower centre, and the date 'ΣΤΗΝ ΕΔΡΑ ΤΗΣ ΕΠΙΤΡΟΠΗΣ 5 ΙΟΥΝΗ 1944' is printed at foot. |
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| Comments |
PEEA — the Political Committee of National Liberation — functioned as a resistance government operating from the mountains of occupied Greece, and this note is one of the very few examples of a fully clandestine wartime administration issuing its own currency on its own soil. Printed somewhere within "Free Greece," the Axis-unoccupied highland interior, the exact press location has never been definitively established in the literature.
The oka, an Ottoman-era unit of weight repurposed here as a denomination, speaks to how improvised the entire monetary project was. No central bank, no established printing infrastructure — just a committee asserting financial authority in a war zone.