BERLIN (WJC)–Ernst Cramer, a Jewish journalist who fled Nazi Germany and served as an American soldier in World War II, has died in Berlin, one day before his 97th birthday. He was a champion of Israel who also fought to improve relations between Germans, Jews and Americans.
Born in Augsburg in 1913, Cramer was incarcerated in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938 by the Nazis. He was released on condition that he leave the country. He and his late sister, Helene, made it to the United States, but their parents, Martin and Clare, and his brother Erwin were murdered in the Holocaust.
Cramer returned to Buchenwald as a soldier in the US Army, just after the camp’s liberation in April 1945. In 1958, the publisher Axel Springer hired him as a reporter, and he remained with the publishing house.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany said in a statement that it had lost “an outstanding personality.” Lala Süsskind, head of Berlin’s Jewish community, praised Cramer’s “boundless energy, power and inspiration.”
Mathias Döpfner, executive chairman of Axel Springer AG, described Cramer’s death as “a great loss to our company. After Axel Springer he was the most formative figure in the corporation. He was until the end full of confidence and ideas. A fulfilled life has come to an end.”
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress