Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp scrip, 5 kronen note, acquired by a US soldier and NRRA administrator

Scrip, valued at 5 kronen, issued in 1943 in Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto-labor camp acquired by Mordecai E. Schwart. Schwartz, a soldier in the United States Army, was recruited after the war ended in May 1945 to serve as Area Director for UNRRA. He worked for UNRRA until 1948, when the organization was deactivated. He then became Area Director for the International Refugee Organization (IRO), supervising twenty-eight displaced persons camps in Germany. The DP camps were set up to house and feed, and to provide medical service and legal protection for survivors of the concentration and slave labor camps, and to offer them the chance to reestablish their lives postwar. When IRO was deactivated in 1951, Mordecai was recruited by US Air Force Intelligence. The scrip was issued in Terezin as all currency was confiscated from deportees upon entry and replaced with scrip and ration coupons that could be exchanged only in the camp. The Theresienstadt camp existed for 3.5 years, from November 24, 1941 to May 9, 1945. It was located in a region of Czechoslovakia occupied by Germany, renamed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and made part of the Greater German Reich. No restrictions on access Mordecai E. Schwartz had a college degree in business adminstration and was fluent in six languages when he enlisted in the United States Army in 1942. After the war ended in May 1945, he was stationed in Munich, Germany, and was recruited by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). He requested and was granted a European discharge from the US Army and became the Area Director for UNRRA in the US Zone in Germany from 1945 to 1948. Upon the deactivation of UNRRA in 1948, he was transferred and made Area Director for the International Refugee Organization (IRO), supervising twenty-eight displaced persons camps in Germany. The displaced persons camps were set up to house and feed, and to provide medical service, and legal protection for survivors of the concentration and slave labor camps, and to offer them the chance to reestablish their lives postwar. When IRO was deactivated in 1951, Mordecai was recruited by US Air Force Intelligence in Munich and served in their worldwide operations until his retirement with highest honors.