Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp scrip, 5 kronen note, issued to a Dutch Jewish inmate

Scrip, valued at 5 kronen, that may have been issued to Abigael de Vries in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto-labor camp in 1943. All currency was confiscated from deportees upon entry and replaced with scrip and ration coupons that could be exchanged only in the camp. Abigael was living in Amsterdam with her two children, 10 year old Hansje and 9 year old Ingeborg, when it was occupied by Germany in May 1940. The family was deported to Westerbork transit camp on May 26, 1943. In September, the children were released and sent to an orphanage in Amsterdam. Abigael was deported the next day to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. On January 25, 1944, she was transferred to Theresienstadt and was there when the camp was liberated by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945. She was able to return to Amsterdam in July 1945. Her children were with her sisters who had taken custody of them from the orphanage in 1943. Hansje was paralyzed from the neck down, having been shot in the neck by a German soldier on April 23, 1945, while foraging for coal with his sister. Amsterdam had experienced severe food and fuel emergencies since the spring of 1945 so Abigael sent Inge to Copenhagen. Hansje died of his injuries on July 11, 1946.