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50 Lire Cremona Concentration Camp
| Issuer | Campo Concentramento per Internati Civili - Cremona |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1945 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Lira (1861-2001) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Plain letterpress print on buff card stock. At left, a boxed denomination vignette reads 'LIRE 50'; centre-left bears a lightly impressed Star of David stamp. Upper right carries a handwritten serial number; lower right shows a circular violet camp control stamp overlapping the text 'Il Comandante il Campo'. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
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| Protection type | Camp stamp |
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| Comments |
Italy's wartime internment camps operated a parallel scrip economy under a system mandated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which required civilian internees — many of them foreign nationals, political detainees, and Jews awaiting deportation decisions — to conduct all internal transactions in camp-issued currency rather than lire. The Cremona camp's scrip circulated exclusively within that closed system, redeemable at the camp canteen for goods under strict rationing. The denomination itself is unusually large for camp scrip of this type, where lower values dominated daily canteen exchange.
The camp stamp as the sole security feature reflects how hastily these instruments were produced — and how little the authorities expected forgery to be a meaningful problem when the scrip had no value outside the wire.