Date of birth:

January 8th, 1922 (Boxtel/North Brabant, Netherlands)

Date of death:

March 31st, 1945 (Zutphen?gelderland, Netherlands)

Buried on:

Dutch Field of Honour Loenen
Plot: C. Grave: 293.

Nationality:

Dutch

Lived in Zutphen, Van Heeckerenlaan 45. Son of chief clerk Johan August Sonnenberg (4 August 1892 Mook) and Aaltje Hendrika van Londen (20 July 1888 Boxtel). Unmarried. Student. On the grave monument and in the death certificate of Sonnenberg, 17 April 1945 is mentioned as the date of death. This is probably the date on which his remains were found. Incidentally, the death certificate does not state, as is customary in such cases, that the person concerned was found deceased. Together with nine others, he was shot on 31 March 1945, when places such as Winterswijk, Groenlo and Aalten had already been liberated by the Allies, on the orders of SS-Untersturmführer Ludwig Heinemann (1911) and then thrown into the IJssel. One of the men, the Hague military policeman Wouter van Benthem, had his bullet ricochet off a suspender button. Because the Germans thought he was dead, he was not shot in the neck. He was also lucky that they first seized his heavy military police boots before throwing him into the water. At the end of March 2014, the daily newspaper De Stentor reported that the names of the killed resistance fighters would be clearly visible on the war memorial on the IJsselkade. Heinemann (1911) was sentenced to death by the Special Court in Arnhem, which held its session in Zutphen. He was executed on the Galgenberg near Arnhem on 10 February 1947. Heinemann is one of the five Germans who were executed in our country.

Do you have more information about this person? Inform us!

• - POLDERMAN, K. & RUITER, H. DE, IN MEMORIAM, VOK, Amsterdam, 2020.
  Voormalige site Genlias en zoekakten.nl, familysearch.org (overlijdensakte 190 d.d. 19 april 1945 gemeente Zutphen); site wiewaswie.nl; artikelen dagblad de Stentor, 24, 29 en 31 maart 2014; Homme Krol en John te Linde, Eefde in bange dagen tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
  - David Johan Sonnenberg | Oorlogsgravenstichting
  

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