Clara Kramer papers

Identifier
irn77708
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1994.95.3
  • 1999.A.0138
  • 2011.271.1
  • 1994.95.2
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Polish
  • German
  • English
  • Hebrew
Source
EHRI Partner

Extent and Medium

folders

10

Creator(s)

Biographical History

Klara Schwarz in Żółkiew, Poland (now Zhovkva, Ukraine) in 1927 to Meir and Salka Reizfeld Schwarz. She had a sister Manja. In September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and Zolkiew was occupied by the Soviets. In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. In December 1942, the Schwarz family went into hiding in a secret bunker under the home of an ethnic German family, Valentin and Julia Beck and their daughter Ala. Manja was caught and killed when she fled the bunker during a block fire in April 1943. The region was liberated in July 1944. Clara and her family went ot a disaplced persons home in Austria where Klara met and married Sol Kramer (1920-2011). They emigrated to Israel in 1948. Clara and Sol later immigrated to the United States in 1957.

Archival History

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Acquisition

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Clara Kramer, in memory of her sister Mania

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Funding Note: The accessibility of this collection was made possible by the generous donors to our crowdfunded Save Their Stories campaign.

Clara Kramer donated the Clara Kramer papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994, 1999, and 2011 in memory of her sister Mania. Accessions previously cataloged as 1994.95.2, 1999.A.0138 and 2011.271.1 have been incorporated into this collection.

Scope and Content

The Clara Kramer papers consist of a wartime diary written in hiding, an autograph book, biographical materials, and photographs documenting Kramer’s experience in hiding during the war as well as pre‐Holocaust friendships and postwar nursing training and work in displaced persons camps and in Israel. Clara Kramer’s diary contains daily accounts of her life in a hidden bunker from April 1943 through their liberation written in notebooks given to her by the family’s protector, Valentin Beck. The diary describes cramped living conditions, meager food supplies, frequent threats of discovery, and the death of Kramer’s sister. The autograph book includes autographs, messages, poems, and drawings by Kramer’s childhood friends. Biographical materials consist of certificates and memoranda documenting Kramer’s training and service as a nurse in and around displaced persons camps in Linz, Steyr, and Bad Reichenall as well as affidavits documenting the identities and marriage of Sol Kramer’s parents, Berisch and Ethel Kramer. Photographs depict Clara Kramer’s childhood friends and the Żółkiew synagogue. These photographs were removed from the autograph book described above.

System of Arrangement

The Clara Kramer papers are arranged as four series: I. Diary, 1943-1944, II. Autograph book, 1940-1941, III. Biographical materials, 1947-1951, IV. Photographs, approximately 1940-1941

People

Subjects

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.