Ernst Obermeijer grew up in Germany. He came to the Netherlands to study at the trade school for leather workers. He rented a room in Waalwijk and worked at a flowershop to make money. Ernst befriended his neighbors, and when he was deported to Westerbork on August 28th 1942, said goodbye to them by sticking his hand through the window, since he was not allowed to enter the house of a non-Jewish family. On the 31st of August he was deported to Auschwitz where he died in 1943 after heavy work in the mines.
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On 1 September 1938, Ernst Obermeijer registered with the registry of births, deaths and marriages in Waalwijk. He had fled the Nazi regime in Germany. He was placed on a transport to Poland with five other Jews from Waalwijk. The train stopped at Kozle (Poland), where all the Jewish men between the ages of fifteen and fifty had to get off. This included five Waalwijkers, one of whom survived. That survivor has described what happened next: ‘[T]hat night [we arrived] at the first camp in Upper Silesia, Niederkirch. The other young men from Waalwijk were with me. They stayed there almost ten days and then were transferred to another camp.’ Ernst ended up in Fürstengrube, an Aussenkommando associated with Auschwitz. There he was forced to work in a coal mine near Lawki (Poland).
Jack Didden, ‘De laatste Joden in Waalwijk’, in: M. van Loon e.a. (red.), Geschiedenis van de joden in Waalwijk 1690-1945 (Waalwijk, 1990) 80-109