Whilst little is known about Kraus' early life, what is known is that she was a young woman of Roma origin, who was living in Czechoslovakia with her family prior to their deportation to Auschwitz in 1943.
[2][3] Roma and Sinti people were persecuted during the Holocaust and Kraus family were part of the 500,000 who were murdered in the Romani genocide.
[7][8] She told Gilsenbach that her parents were both murdered in Auschwitz and that she was then transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp where she worked as a slave.
[4] Kraus was featured in the 2019 exhibition Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London.
[9] The exhibition highlighted the persecution of Roma and Sinti communities and the murder of 500,000 people, termed Porajmos in Romani.