Clara Filderman and Livia Diaconescu

This picture was taken on 30th June 1932, in Focsani, in front of the middle entrance of our house on 82 Cotesti Street. Clara Filderman, my sister, is on the right and I am on the left. The stone stairs and the stained-glass window of the entrance, an Oriental influence, are visible in the background. The photo was taken in the morning and we, the two girls of the Filderman family are still wearing our pajamas. Clara sits quietly behind me, while I act naughtily as usual. My mother never let us sleep late. There were some nice pillars in the front part of our house; the stairs were large and the entrance door had a stained-glass window. There were two doors: a wooden one and a glass one. After the hallway, came a huge room, like a ballroom, then some other rooms and a spacious kitchen; it had a stove with a range, a cupboard and a rack of vessels which were so tidy they shone. My sister, Clara, was six years older than me. She was born in Focsani, in 1922. When she was eleven, they realized she had diabetes. After the disease was diagnosed, they took her to the clinic, but an assistant told them to take her to Vienna. In those times, at the beginning of the 1930s, getting a passport wasn't a problem; generally speaking, money wasn't a problem either. They went to a sanatorium there and the doctors managed, through diet, to bring her to the minimum risk level. They also gave her a book on how she had to be nursed - she had to use scales to portion her food. There was a time when she had to weigh her cherries and, to get another portion, she also added the weight of the pits. My mother cooked specially for her. Clara had to measure her glycosuria twice a day using a solution, she dosed the insulin on her own and injected it in her leg by herself - she did that from the age of eleven to 22. I didn't go to kindergarten much. There was a teacher there, Betty, who prepared a Chinese dance for a festivity. I was in it and wore a crepe dress. When there wasn't anyone I could play with - there weren't many children in the neighborhood - I would sing on my own and jump up and down to the tune of the songs I had learnt in school.