 In early 1940, he managed to achieve the closure of the "murder cave" or "small camp" a special camp for mostly stateless Jews from Vienna and the Occupied Eastern Territories by declaring risk of disease to the SS and the surrounding villages; 500 barely living and emaciated inmates were transferred to the main camp.In early November 1941 Kraemer was detained, along with his deputy Karl Peix, in the camp lock-up known as "the bunker", then transferred to the satellite camp Goslar.Both were declared by the camp commandant Karl-Otto Koch to have been "shot while escaping" by the SS on the morning of 6 November in a quarry near Hahndorf.