Voucher - 1 Shilling Hay Camp 7; Confinement Voucher

Hay Camp 7 was one of three internment camps established at Hay, New South Wales, to house civilian internees — predominantly Jewish refugees from Central Europe who had fled Nazi persecution, only to be classified as "enemy aliens" upon arrival in Australia. The bitter irony was not lost on the internees themselves. An internal camp economy was permitted under Geneva Convention provisions, and these vouchers were the medium through which it functioned, redeemable at the camp canteen rather than in any external economy.

George Teltscher, who designed this voucher, was himself an internee — a trained graphic artist from Vienna. The fact that the camp's own prisoners designed and presumably helped produce its scrip is the detail that makes this piece genuinely unusual. Camb#1213 is the collector reference for the 1 Shilling denomination within this series.