Ernst Kramer personal papers

Arnost Kramer was born on 29 May 1910 in Kralovske Vinohrady in Prague. He came from a quite wealthy Jewish family. His father was the director of two companies that Arnost became director of later. His father also advised the Czechoslovak government on currency in the years 1924-1926. Arnost Kramer was a Second Lieutenant in the infantry in Czechoslovak army. He left active duty on 28 March 1934. He was a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp for some time and applied for a provisional identification papers on 15 May 1945. It is also said that he spent some time in Theresienstadt.  

Arnost Kramer was married to Eva Aletrino, who was not Jewish, but they divorced during the war because Arnost thought that would be safer for her. After the war they remarried in the United Kingdom.

The father of Eva Kramer, Louis Aletrino, was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 10 April 1892 and worked as a journalist. It is thought that he went to Prague at some point. From Prague he had to flee in March 1939 but he was captured and brought to Mauthausen. He died in the camp on 29 August 1942 and the cause of death was ‘shot while trying to escape’. He was married to Albertine Aletrino, born Haase. He was born in Leitmeritz a.d. Elbe, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She moved to London in the 1950s to live with her daughter.

Arnost and Eva lived in York for some time and then moved to London. Arnost started or took over the sweets company called Craven’s of York. Eva died in the eighties and Arnost in 2003. They never had children.