"Hell and rebirth: my experiences during the time of persecution"
Extent and Medium
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Creator(s)
- Edith Kramer
Biographical History
Edith Krasa Kramer (née Liebeck, 1899-1994) was born on 7 October 1899 in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia). She studied medicine in Königsberg and Munich. She married in 1925 after meeting her future husband in Berlin, Germany. He lost his job at Charité Hospital and died in 1937 of natural causes. In March 1942 she was sent to Posen, Germany (Poznań, Poland) to treat women prisoners at Fort Radziwill. She was later accused of sabotage and arrested by the Gestapo in 1943. She was imprisoned in Posen, Berlin-Alexanderplatz, and then Theresienstadt. After liberation she went to Switzerland and then immigrated to Australia in 1948. She studied medicine in Syndey, Australia. In 1951 Edith married Friedrich Kramer (b. 1902), a Czech musician who fled Vienna, Austria for Australia in 1938.
Archival History
Eleanor Genesson
Acquisition
The testimony was given to Louis and Eleanor Genesson by Edith Kramer circa 1977. They, in turn, donated it the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in June 1991 through Michael Berenbaum.
Scope and Content
Consists of a copy of "Hell and Rebirth: My Experiences during the Time of Persecution," by Dr. Edith Kramer. The memoir describes Kramer's experiences as a Jewish physician forced to care for women in various camps near Poznań, Poland. Also included is information on the inferior medical conditions in the camps, inferior sanitation, the treatment of women, and Kramer's post-liberation acquaintance with Hermann Hesse (Nobel Prize winner) and his wife, Ninon Hesse.
People
- Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962.
- Hesse, Ninon.
- Kramer, Edith.
Corporate Bodies
- Antonienhof (Concentration camp)
- Deutsche Arbeitsfront
- Germany. Gestapo
- Labor camp (unspecified) (ushmm)
- Fort VII (Concentration camp)
- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Schutzstaffel
Subjects
- Jews--Czechoslovakia.
- Suicide.
- Poland
- Poznań (Poland)
- Jews--Germany.
- Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust.
- Escapes.
- Sanitation.
- Rape.
- Austria.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Australia.
- Prisons
- Poetry.
- Kapos.
- Executions and executioners.
- Labor.
- Refugees.
- Switzerland.
- Women.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Hiding places.
- Railroads.
- Berlin (Germany)
- Transports.
- Magen David.
- Physicians.
- Emigration and immigration.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
Genre
- Personal narratives.
- Document