Benjamin Hartog “Benno” ter Berg was born on July 4, 1924 in Assen, the Netherlands. He was murdered in Auschwitz on September 30,1942.
The picture was taken from his diary, the newspaper article on the left is about a meeting of the NJN,(Nederlandse Jeugdbond voor Natuurstudie), the Dutch Youth union for Nature study. Of which he was a member of. One word that stood out for me in the article was ‘propaganda’ in the context of the article it was a positive rather then a negative spin to the word.it really was in the context of PR or marketing.
On the left is a picture of a man riding a horse. Although I can’t really make out the second word on the line at the bottom, I think the line says “he heard his horse and rushed into the woods”
Some of you may think that it is a strange picture to use for a piece on a Holocaust victim. But I think it probably highlights the horror of the Holocaust more then any of the thousands of graphic pictures of corpses.
The picture shows the day to day interests of a young boy, at the time he drew that drawing and glued that newspaper article in his diary, he was still just 15. Only 3 years later he would be murdered. Not because he belonged to a subversive organisation, or was a member of a militant group. No he was murdered because he was Jewish.
He had a passion for nature and had joined a group of other young people with a passion for nature. That bit of joy he had was taken away from him in October 1941, where he was told he could no longer be a member of the NJN.
Benno and all of his family members were brutally murdered by the Nazi regime who had had occupied the Netherlands.
And I deliberately say Nazis rather then Germans, because there were many Dutch people way too eager to help out.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/350432/het-dagboek-van-benno-ter-berg
History of Sorts 
Reblogged this on History of Sorts.
LikeLike