Sterbebrief (Death letter) Obergefreiter Paul Pentrup.

This is the Sterbebrief (death letter) of Obergefreiter Paul Pentrup. The letter was addressed to the Hauloh-Holtkamp family, residing on Wilhelmstraße in Lüdinghausen. Obergefreiter Paul Pentrup was born on March 26, 1910, in Lüdinghausen, Kreis Coesfeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. He was part of 294-L.Sch.Btl.676 (Landes Schützen Battalion), a unit stationed in Dordrecht in 1944. After fighting in Normandy and later taking leave in Germany in September, he fell on October 24, 1944, during an Allied bombing raid on Park Merwesteijn. This park housed the headquarters of the German 15th Army, including five bunkers built within the complex. On October 24, 1944, five squadrons of Hawker Typhoons from the Royal Air Force, acting on a request from the Dordrecht resistance, carried out a bombing raid on the headquarters. The destruction was immense. While the Dordrecht resistance claimed that many German soldiers, including generals, were among the casualties, the civilian population suffered the most. The estimated civilian death toll was 69.

Obergefreiter Paul Pentrup was one of the German soldiers killed in the bombing. He was buried with military honors in Row 20, Grave 129 in the German section of the general cemetery in Dordrecht. On August 20, 1947, he was reburied at the German military cemetery in Ysselsteyn, where he remains to this day in Block CP

• Row 11 - Grave 272¹.

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