ABSTRACT
On 9 March 1958, an unusual procession took place in the city of Bochum, which is situated in Germany’s highly industrialized Ruhr valley. After attending a devotional service at a Catholic church in one of Bochum’s suburbs (Bochum-Stiepel), a group of men, women and children, led by several clergymen, proceeded to a construction site in a neighboring suburb (Bochum-Weitmar). Prominent in the procession was a group of 20 men wearing prisoner-of-war uniforms. Some of them wore Italian forage caps, others old German military coats, yet others Russian fur caps and padded jackets. Their different attire notwithstanding, all of them were recognizable as former prisoners of war in Soviet camps, although only some of them bore on their left sleeves what contemporary newspapers described as the degrading ‘cloth badges with the Russian initials VP’ (Voina pleny or POW).
