I have seen a variation of this belt ,its not designed to hold anything up just to hide .It was worn under a shirt above the hips and was used to hide gold coins .Many jewish people escaped Germany with such a belt ,the German currency was almost worthless and to buy your way out of a problem gold was the way to go .Gold is recognised around the world since the time of Christ even James Bond carries Krugerrands in his belt for the same purpose .Gold is like the real wealth of the world and paper currency has no worth and is supported only by confidence .Paper can be printed by the millions but it takes 15 tons of gold ore to make one ounce of gold .To give you an example of how gold holds it value if you had a 1000 gold coins in 1970 you could buy a house for $40,000 with the same 1000 gold coins today you could still buy a house 1000x$1000 its the paper money that screwed up not the gold .
All the best Jeff