Dedication of the Ernst Cramer Room

November 16, 2009.  In an official ceremony, Ambassador Murphy dedicated the Ernst Cramer Conference Center in the U.S. Embassy. The room is named in honor of Ernst Cramer, a German-American Jewish journalist who was interned in the concentration camp at Buchenwald for six weeks in 1938. In 1939, he received a visa from the original U.S. Embassy on Pariser Platz and left Germany for the U.S. in August of that year. He became an American citizen, returned to Europe as a soldier in 1944 and decided to stay in Germany with the American Military Government to help rebuild German media and cultural institutions. As Ambassador Murphy said, “through the stations of his life, Ernst Cramer has always steadfastly refused to accept anything but the best in people.” His optimism and respect for the goals of democracy and freedom will live on in the Ernst Cramer Conference Center. The room was inaugurated almost a year and a half ago, on July 4, 2008, America’s Independence Day, as part of the Grand Opening of the new chancery. On that day, Mr. Cramer and a group of Airlift veterans met with Chancellor Merkel and President George H. W. Bush.

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