Ernest Sterzer is the only known case of a Holocaust survivor with type I diabetes.
Ernest Sterzer was born on April 28, 1925, in Vienna, Austria to a Jewish family. In 1928, at the age of three, Ernest was diagnosed with type I diabetes, a few years after the discovery of insulin.
In October 1942, at just 17 years old, Sterzer was sent to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, a Nazi concentration camp, with his parents and two siblings. For two years, Sterzer traded bread that he stole from the bakery where he worked for insulin. He was moved to multiple camps during the war, struggling to survive without access to insulin.
Sterzer was transferred to Auschwitz in October 1944. With no access to insulin for several days, he was hospitalized after falling into a coma. A Russian Jewish doctor in charge injected Ernest with insulin using a rusty needle. Luckily, he did not develop blood poisoning.
Sterzer was later transferred in a cattle train, with 6,000 other prisoners, from Auschwitz to Heinkel Werke, the largest aeroplane factory in Germany. Sterzer was so weak he struggled to stand up. He would have died in a few short hours if one of the prison doctors had not given him an insulin injection.
The forced labour, the transfer from Auschwitz to Oranienburg, and the sporadic access to insulin resulted in several complications including mastoiditis, pleurisy, and paralysis of the soft palate that rendered him unable to speak or swallow.
Luckily, Sterzer survived those complications and was liberated by two American soldiers during the “death march” in 1945. He returned to Vienna where he reunited with his brother. Their sister, Gerda, who had immigrated to America in 1939, arranged for them to travel to New York City in 1947.
The inhumane treatment and torture at different concentration camps, coupled with Sterzer’s inability to control his diabetes, led to his complete blindness in December 1956.
Ernest Sterzer wrote a memoir describing his life experience as a diabetic during the Holocaust and his remarkable journey of survival, endurance, and escaping death time and again. He died on May 1, 1973.
— Written by Elissar Gerges