In the beginning of March, the Money Museum received a new gift – more than 80 year old bills from the Standart Bank of the Republic of South Africa. It is a gift from a former academic Vladas Blažinskas, who also told the story of how they were discovered.
In the 1960s, he started working in Bartkuškis agriculture vocational school (in Širvintos district), which was located in the former Bartkuškis manor. From 1963 to 1964, the manor was being repaired, and everything was being brutally demolished and destroyed. While demolishing a tile stove on the second floor, students found some old documents and a couple of South Africa’s bank bills from 1939, which Blažinskas took home. The bills were valid, so he gave them to his acquaintances working as sailors, who were by coincidence soon sailing to South Africa. The sailors visited the Standart Bank upon arrival to try and cash them in, but they were made fun of, because the bills were of very low value at the time (two and four pounds), and they were suggested to cash them in in Moscow. Of course, this wasn’t an option in Soviet times, so the sailors returned the bills to Blažinskas.
The bills belonged to Jossel (Jozef) Hyman Ginsburg, born in 1895 in Kaunas, who left for South Africa with his family in 1915, and for a long time lived there. How the bills ended up in Bartkuškis manor is still unknown.
