Emiel Meijers, the youngest of the eight children of Izaak Meijers and Johanna de Winter, was born on 10 May 1907 in Doetinchem. He married Willemina Matje Godschalk (Willy) in Den Helder on 29 April 1932, a daughter of Maurits Godschalk from Ommen and Leentje Coltof from Gorredijk. Willy was born in Ommen on 11 February 1911.
Emiel Meijers earned his living as a metal dealer and lived with his wife in Doetinchem, where their daughters Lena in 1933 and Johanna Aleida in 1935 were born. At some point then the family moved to Nijmegen, where their son Robbie was born in 1938 but in 1940 they left Nijmegen for Arnhem, where they moved into a house in the Mauvestraat 15 and where their fourth child Willemina was born on 19 September 1940.
On 1 October 1942 a search notice was placed in the “Algemeen Politieblad” (General Police Paper) by the Chief Commissoner of Arnhem, which made clear that the Meijers family had gone into hiding. On 17 October 1942 however they have been arrested and carried off to Westerbork and put on transport to Auschwitz on 30 October. This transport with in total 659 deportees made a stop in Kozel, located ± 80 west from Auschwitz. There, 200 boys and men between 15 and 50 years were forced to leave the train to be deployed as forced labourers in the surrounding nazi labor camps.
Those, who remained in the train, (women, children and elderly), were transported onwards to Auschwitz to be killed there. On arrival on 2 November 1942, Willemina Matje Meijers-Godschalk and her children Lena, Johanna, Robbie and Willemina were gassed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Emiel Meijers, then 35 years of age, no doubt belonged to the group of 200 men who had to leave the train in Kozel, but it is unknown in which of the many labour camps he eventually has ended, nor how and under which circumstances he has lost his life. It is therefore that the Dutch Ministry of Justice after the war ordered the Municipality of Arnhem to draw up a certificate of death for Emiel Meijers, in which has been established that he has died on 31 March 1944 in Mid-Europe.
Sources includes the website wiewaswie.nl; website openarchieven.nl; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Emiel Meijers, Willemina Matje Godschalk, Lena, Johanna Aleida, Robbie and Willemina Meijers; the Archive of Gelderland, Civil Registry, Mid Europe, archive 207, inventory 10010, 26 January 1952, deed no. 38a; the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl and information by relatives of the Meijers family.