Refael Mayer was born in Ploiesti, Romania, 1860 to Khaim. He was a rabbi and a widower of Rivka. Prior to WWII he lived in Belgrad, Yugoslavia. During the war he was in Belgrad, Yugoslavia. Refael was murdered in the Shoah. Place of death: Belgrad, Yugoslavia, 1941.
During the Shoah, Jews were murdered in a variety of ways, among them gassing, shooting, burning, drowning or burial alive, exhaustion through forced labor, starvation, epidemic diseases, deprivation of medical care and minimal hygienic conditions, and more. Some Jews took their own lives in order to escape arrest and further persecution, or to end their hopeless, relentless suffering.