Savely Kramarov was born on 13 October 1934 to
Jewish parents: father Viktor Savelyevich Kramarov (Виктор Савельевич Крамаров), a prominent Moscow attorney, and mother Benedikta Solomonovna "Basya" Kramarova (née Volchek) (Бенедиктa Соломоновнa "Бася" Крамарова (Волчек)). When young Savely was only three years old, the elder Kramarov represented some defendants in a widely publicized
Soviet secret police case. Within a year Kramarov's father was himself the victim of a
"Stalinist purge"—his crime, representing his clients too vigorously. Arrested and tortured to confess, Kramarov's father was sentenced to a term of eight years in the Soviet
Gulag. Savely's mother was forced to divorce his convict father, and mother and son lived for a time in a communal apartment. Before Viktor Kramarov's prison term was up, young Savely's mother died, leaving him effectively an orphan. By a stroke of luck, she had managed to register him as Russian, not Jewish, on his domestic Soviet passport. Savely was once allowed to see his father prior to the elder Kramarov's exile in
Biysk. During this meeting, his father, practically a stranger to him, told Savely of his Jewish faith that had sustained him in prison. In the 1950s, the once prominent attorney died in exile. Kramarov spent the remainder of his childhood in poverty, living with relatives, mainly his maternal uncles. During this time, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis; a Jewish physician helped him back to health. ==Education==