Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko was the youngest of the two children of the cattle trader Jacob Menko and Amalia van Gelder. He was born in Winterswijk at the address Tuunterstraat 7 on 21 February 1910 and just as his father, he was a cattle trader too.
On 10 May 1938, Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko married in Winterswijk Elisabeth Hamburger, who was born on 2 September 1915 in Fürstenau (Germany) as a daughter of the horse trader David Hamburger and Röschen Stoppelman. The couple went living at Tuunterstraat 5, where Bernard and Elisabeth had a twin, viz. Jacob and Rose Amalia on 28 February 1940.
Bernard and his wife Elisabeth were already registered in Westerbork on 4 October 1942 but from notes on the Jewish Council registration cards of the twins Jacob and Rose Amalia, it appeared that (for unknown reasons) they were only brought to Westerbork on 27 February 1943. Bernard and Elisabeth stayed in the barracks 59 and 63 till the entire family was deported to the East on 7 September 1943.
During the night of 9/10 September 1943, they arrived in Auschwitz. Elisabeth Menko-Hamburger, has been murdered immediately after arrival there on 10 September 1943 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, together with her children Jacob and Rose Amalia. Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko however awaited another fate: early October 1943 he was deported to Warsaw to clear rubble in the devastated ghetto there, where he eventually lost his life on 31 March 1944.
Sources include the website openarchieven.nl/birth of Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko, wedding Bernard N.J. Menko x Elisabeth Hamburger; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko, Elisabeth Menko-Hamburger, Jacob Menko (1940) and Rose Amalia Menko (1940); the wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl and the Gelders archive in Arnhem, Civil Registry Deaths Winterswijk, arcive 207A, inventory 17711, deed 13 dated 14 january 1952 made out in Winterswijk for Bernard Nathan Jacob Menko.