9th Location: Kampstr. 25

The Cramer Family

The Stumbling Stone which had been laid for Carl Cramer was removed, using force, and stolen between 5th and 7th March, 2011.

The local population reacted immediately with their support in obtaining a replacement. We will see to it that the substitute stone will be replaced by the summer of 2011 (done in April 2011).

The Jewish family Cramer had lived at Kampstrasse 25 since 1931. The father, shopkeeper Carl Cramer, was born in Neukirchen, 18th June, 1872, and the mother, Lina nee´Steinberg, in Hohenwepel on 23rd January, 1874. The pair had three sons, Rudolf, born 20th January, 1906, Ludwig, born 4th April, 1908 and Berthold, born 19th January, 1918. Carl and Lina Cramer moved to Minden from Hohenwepel in 1912, with their two oldest sons, probably at first, to Pioneerstrasse.

Carl Cramer probably became psychologically ill in the 1930’s. Because the patient’s records cannot be found, due to probable destruction during the war, it is impossible to say when the illness began, the 9_Carl Cramerdiagnosis and what course it took. Fact is that he was admitted to the Mental Home at Guetersloh, on 4th March, 1940. It’s possible to follow his path, with certainty, from there.

On 1st September, 1939, Hitler passed a secret order giving permission to carry out Euthanasia. On 30th August, 1940, the Reich’s Minister of the Interior ordered that all Jewish patients in the northern German and Westfalian Mental Homes were to be sent to the County Hospital, Wunstorf. On 21st September, 1940 Carl Cramer together with a further eleven male and six female patients, was sent from Guetersloh to Wunstorf. Six days later, on 27th September, 1940, 158 Jewish patients from Wunstorf were deported to the extermination establishment at Brandenburg on the Havel, among them Carl Cramer.

He was murdered there on the same day in the gas chamber.

It became known at a later date that Brandenburg was the location of extermination. The relatives and the Mental Homes were told that the deported persons had been taken to the mental asylum, Cholm, near Lublin in Poland.

The death certificates were sent from Lublin by post and mainly tuberculosis, pneumonia or typhus was stated as the cause of death.

This deception was to preve9_Lina Cramernt the relatives from investigating further.

On the death of her husband Lina Cramer had to leave her home and was forced to live in the Jewish Community house at Kampstrasse 6 together with many other Jews. On 31st July, 1942, thirty Jewish people were probably arrested in Minden by the Gestapo, taken to Bielefeld and deported, from there, to the concentration camp at

Theresienstadt. Among them was Lina Cramer. On 15th May, 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz on the Transport DZ-2151 and was murdered there. The date and the circumstances of her death are not known. She was officially declared dead on 8thMay, 1945.

 The Cramer couple’s three sons were able to leave Germany before the start of the war and survived the Nazi regime.