Third Reich SS Police Division Cuff Band & Documentation – Item 107892

Interesting full length RZM machine embroidered uniform removed SS Polizei cuff band. Black other ranks example with owners name. Comes complete with re print photographs of owner in SS uniform plus post war photocopies of newspaper articles  giving details of the history of this former Prisoner of War.  He was captured three days before the end of the war and held prisoner and never returned to Germany. He was at Harperley POW Camp in 1946 near Crook, County Durham. He worked on farms as a POW where he met and married the farmers daughter. An interesting grouping.

Note:  Built in 1943, at first to house low-risk Italian and later German prisoners of war, the camp is remarkably complete, and includes both the prisoners’ and guards’ compounds. The unique, purpose-built theatre has a stage, orchestra pit, and stepped auditorium, all built in concrete and brick. The canteen – the main communal building – has forested mountain ranges, grazing stags, and idealised scenes of the German countryside on the walls, which were painted by the inmates to remind them of home.

Harperley prisoners played an important role in the wartime and post-war economy of the Weardale, working as agricultural labourers, making toys for local children, and painting a set of the Stations of the Cross for nearby Wolsingham’s Catholic Church. A number of former prisoners subsequently married locally, and raised families who still live in the area.