History of Sorts

They say that music soothes the savage beast, But it can also bring joy and transport you back to a better time in your life. Benny Behr must have known this because he tried to keep up the spirits, by playing music.

Benny was Jewish Jewish and was married to a non-Jewish woman, Wien Bouwina Sijtina Havinga. Mixed-married Jewish people were exempt from deportation to concentration camps or death camps,initially. This meant that Benny Behr’s identity card not only had a stamp with the letter J, but also a Sperr stamp. He was one of the first mixed-married Jewish men to be forced to work in March 1944 at Fliegerhorst Havelte, a location in Drenthe that had been chosen by the German occupier for the construction of an airport.[Benny Behr was housed in the barracks camp at De Doeze on the Hunebedweg, which was also called the Jewish camp.

He…