United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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.
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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
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.
Clara Kramer papers