On 8 March 1927, Elizabeth van Geldere and Jacob Meijers married in The Hague. Elizabeth was a daughter of Barend van Geldere and Sara Schielaar and was born on 10 December 1900 in Rotterdam. She had an older sister who had died at the age of 3 ½ years and a younger sister Helena Roza. Jacob Meijers was a son of Izaak Meijers and Johanna de Winter. On 22 November 1937 their only son Izaak Rudy was born; he survived the Holocaust.
Jacob Meijers was born on 7 October 1891 in Stad Doetinchem as the second in the family of Izaak Meijers, where eight children were born. However, Eduard and Isedore died shortly after their birth. Abraham, Leopold and Michel survived the Holocaust, but Jacob himself, Elizabeth and Emiel were murdered with their families during the Shoah. Their parents, Izaak and Johanna, had already passed away in the 1920s.
A week later, after her marriage in March 1927, Elizabeth van Geldere left her parental home in the Molenstraat in The Hague, on 16 March 1927, to Willemstraat 10 in Doetinchem, where she was officially registered as the wife of Jacob Meijers. Jacob earned his living as a bag dealer and was also an active member of the kehilla Doetinchem. Among other things, he made himself deserving for “the 60th anniversary of the Synagogue and the Kehilla”.
When the war broke out and the registration of all Jews in the Netherlands with the Jewish Council was made compulsory, and numerous anti-Jewish measures were introduced by the Germans, the persecution of the Jews of Doetinchem began in the autumn of 1942. Most likely, it was in the autumn of 1942 that Jacob Meijers was arrested and was handed over to the SD (Sicherheits Dienst) in Arnhem. He had placed silver objects with his neighbors. Of course Jacob had been betrayed by snitchers. (source “The Old People by Hans Kooger, page 60).
The registration card from the file cabinet of the Jewish Council of Jacob Meijers shows that he was transferred from "Amersfoort" to Westerbork on 9 December 1942 and was locked up there in penal barrack 66. It was not unusual for the S.D. to forward detainees from the police station of Arnhem to Westerbork. His little son had meanwhile been admitted to the hospital in Arnhem because of a "highly contagious disease" from where he was later picked up by Michel Meijers, a brother of his father, and was taken in by his family, so he, his uncle and aunt and cousin Leo survived the Holocaust.
Jacob's wife Elizabeth was arrested on 18 October 1942 and deported to Westerbork. Her husband was probably still in “Amersfoort” and arrived at the camp on 9 December. Both Jacob Meijers and his wife Elizabeth Meijers van Geldere were deported on 12 December to Auschwitz, where they were immediately murdered on arrival there on 15 December 1942 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Barend van Geldere; the Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Barend van Geldere; the wedding certificate made out in Den Haag of Van Geldere/Meijers dated 8 July 1927; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council registration cards of Jacob Meijers and Elizabeth Meijers-van Geldere; info from Camp Amersfoort about Jacob Meijers; Pinkas page 339-Doetinchem, years of occupation and Hans Kooger, author of “Het Oude Volk” (the Ancient People), pages 33 and onwards. (a chronicle of Jewish life in the Achterhoek, Liemers and the border area).