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5 Dollars Lethbridge; PoW Camp
| Issuer | Internment Camp 133 (Lethbridge, Alberta) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1945 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Internment Camp 133 P.W.C. $5.00 Lethbridge, Alta. BULMAN BROS. WPG. |
| Reverse description | Plain unprinted yellow-ochre paper, entirely blank with no design elements or text. |
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| Comments |
Camp 133 at Lethbridge was the largest prisoner-of-war camp in Canada during the Second World War, holding German prisoners — overwhelmingly Afrika Korps veterans — in numbers that at peak exceeded 12,000 men. The internal scrip issued there was a practical necessity: Geneva Convention obligations required that working prisoners be compensated, but Canadian authorities were not about to let enemy nationals handle real currency. Bulman Brothers of Winnipeg, a commercial print house better known for farm supply catalogues and trade ephemera, produced the series.
The $5 denomination was the highest in the camp series, and high-value scrip at Lethbridge is meaningfully harder to find than the lower denominations — prisoners had less occasion to spend it and more reason to save or conceal it.