Watch List notes:

CROATIA. Ustase Movement. Silver 5 Kuna Pattern, 1934. Issued by Deschler & Sohn Munich. NGC MS-63.

KM-PN7. This piece was struck as a pattern for the separatist movement known as the Ustase movement seeking to form an independent and nationalist Croatia. Uncirculated and choice, this piece was never handled roughly and only demonstrates light evidence of friction.

The Ustase were a separatist fascist party that operated in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes starting in the 1930s. After the Nazi German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Ustase were given control of an area that includes present day Croatia, and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina to administer as a puppet state to the Germans. Exceptionally brutal in their reign, the Ustase participated in the Holocaust in Yugoslavia creating their own network of forced labor and extermination camps, most infamously Jasenovac. The Ustase participated in mass killings of Jews, Roma, Serbs, and Communists; making them one of the most odious regimes of the 20th Century.

Estimate: $100 - $200