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Original counterfeit banknotes produced by Jewish prisoners under Nazi coercion are about to go on display in Huddersfield - revealing a chilling wartime plot, and the human stories behind the money.
At first glance, they look like pieces of paper from another Britain: crisp, formal, almost elegant in their typography and design. But the counterfeit banknotes going on display at Holocaust Centre North from 1 May carry a far darker history.
These are original forged notes from Operation Bernhard, the secret Nazi counterfeiting scheme of the Second World War. Conceived as a way to undermine the British economy and later used to fund intelligence operations, the mission relied on the forced labour of Jewish prisoners selected for their artistic, technical and printing skills.
The notes have been donated to the Huddersfield-based Centre by Scarborough graphic designer and British banknote collector Andy Taylor, alongside genuine £5 notes from the 1930s and 1940s. Together, the artefacts offer visitors a rare chance to compare the real and the forged - and to reflect on the lives of those compelled to make the counterfeits under threat of death.
For Andy, the donation is not about monetary value. It is about memory. “To me the banknotes are not about profits, they are about people,” he says. “I feel very strongly that more people should have the chance to see them, so they too can learn the stories behind them and keep their memories alive.”
Operation Bernhard was initiated by the Nazi regime as part of an audacious attempt to weaken Britain. The original plan was to flood the country with counterfeit banknotes, destabilising the economy and damaging confidence in sterling.
To produce the forgeries, the SS identified 143 skilled Jewish prisoners from across the concentration camp system. They included engravers, artists, photographers, painters and others whose abilities could be exploited for the task. The men were transferred to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, near Berlin, and housed separately in Blocks 18 and 19 under the supervision of SS Major Bernhard Krueger.
Their isolation was deliberate. The operation was top secret, and the prisoners were prevented from mixing with others in the camp. Survivor accounts describe slightly better material conditions than those endured by many other prisoners - including permission to smoke, Sundays off, and some freedom at the end of the working day - but these privileges existed within a brutal and terrifying context.
The men knew too much. Many believed they would be killed once the work was complete.
That fear was constant. So too was anxiety for relatives elsewhere in the Nazi camp system. Yet most of the prisoners forced into Operation Bernhard survived, in part because their specialist knowledge kept them useful to the regime until the final stages of the war.
The forged banknotes were of extraordinary quality. Although the initial plan to drop them over Britain was never carried out in that form, the counterfeits were used to fund Nazi intelligence operations. Some accounts link the forged currency to the 1943 Gran Sasso Raid, in which Benito Mussolini was freed from imprisonment.
But the prisoners were not passive participants. Survivor Adolf Burger later described how some of the men quietly sabotaged the work by piercing the top left corner of the notes through the image of Britannia - a place, he said, where “none of the King’s subjects would ever allow themselves to pierce”.
It was a tiny act, almost invisible. But within the machinery of a vast criminal enterprise, such gestures mattered.
Eventually, the counterfeits were discovered by a cashier in Tangier, sending alarm through the Bank of England. According to the Bank, Operation Bernhard notes continued to appear in circulation long after the war. At the end of the conflict, large quantities were dumped in Lake Toplitz in Austria, where they remained until recovery efforts in the post-war decades.
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Andy Taylor’s fascination with banknotes began not with espionage or wartime history, but with design.
Growing up in Yorkshire, he remembers visiting York with his parents and being captivated by old notes displayed in an antique and collectors’ shop. He was drawn to their look: the typography, the print quality, the craftsmanship, the sense that each note belonged to a particular moment in time.
He saved for a year to buy his first historical note.
That early interest helped shape his later career as a graphic designer and artworker. Over the years, it also grew into an extensive international collection of genuine and counterfeit banknotes from the 1930s and 1940s.
But as the collection expanded, so did Andy’s understanding of the stories behind the objects. “At first, it was the look of the notes that drew me to them and to start my collection,” he says, “but as my collection grew so too did my fascination in their back stories and in the parts of history that they were connected to.”
Operation Bernhard has recently returned to wider public attention, not least through Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, now on Netflix, which draws on the real Nazi plot to counterfeit British currency. That renewed interest has also increased the market value of surviving notes.
For Andy, that made the decision clearer. Rather than profit from the rising notoriety of the objects, he wanted them preserved and shared.
His donation brings the story to Holocaust Centre North, based at the University of Huddersfield, where the Centre’s work is rooted in telling a global history through local stories - particularly those of Holocaust survivors and refugees who rebuilt their lives in the North of England.
Holocaust Centre North began life as the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, a place of support and community for survivors. Over time, its essential mission has expanded to include education, remembrance and public engagement, with survivor testimony at its heart.
Its permanent exhibition, Through Our Eyes, is built from the experiences of Holocaust refugees and survivors connected to the North. The Centre also cares for objects entrusted to it by survivor families: traces of survival, loss, displacement, bravery and rebuilding.
The Operation Bernhard notes will now sit alongside that wider work.
They are small objects, but they open onto enormous questions. What is the value of money made through terror? How do we remember people whose skills were exploited by those who sought to destroy them? And what can a forged banknote reveal about the machinery of war, forced labour and resistance?
In Andy Taylor’s hands, the notes were part of a private collection. At Holocaust Centre North, they become part of a public act of remembrance.
The Operation Bernhard counterfeit banknotes go on display from 1 May alongside Through Our Eyes at Holocaust Centre North, University of Huddersfield.
Entry is free, and the Centre is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 5pm.
Andy Taylor will also be in conversation with Hannah Randall, Head of Learning at Holocaust Centre North, on 21 May at 5.30pm, when he will showcase his wider banknote collection.
