Clara Filderman

Clara Filderman

This is Clara Filderman, my sister, on 26th May 1929, in a park in Bucharest. On the back of the photo she wrote `To Mom, kisses from the Carol Park, Coca Lala`.

My sister Clara was six years older than me. She was born in Focsani, in 1922. She wore braids and was pretty. 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.

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