Two sisters who survived the Holocaust as little kids and afterwards relocated to Alabama died within days of one another in their adopted home state.
According to the Alabama Holocaust Education Center, Ruth Scheuer Siegler passed away on Saturday at age 95. Ilse Scheuer Nathan, her sister, passed away 10 days earlier at the age of 98.
The women were little girls when Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany in the 1930s. The two women became friends after losing their parents and elder brother during the Holocaust but surviving Nazi extermination camps, according to a release from the organisation.
“They were always together,” Ann Mollengarden, education director for the Alabama Holocaust Education Center, told Al.com. “When Ilse died, I think Ruth was ready.”
According to a biography of the women, their mother was separated from them in the Birkenau concentration camp in the early months of 1944 and they never saw her again. Their father was last seen in the camp, while their brother perished in a German concentration camp.
“The girls worked carrying bricks from one end of the compound to the other for hours at a time. Ilse sewed gun covers and uniforms as well. Working close to the crematory ovens, they saw the mountains of shoes. For the first time, they realized that their fellow prisoners were being killed and cremated,” the biography said.
In 1949, each women married fellow Holocaust survivors. Ruth and Walter Siegler relocated to Birmingham in 1960 to be near Ilse and Walter Nathan, who already resided there.
The Holocaust educators were both widows and remained close friends till the end, despite living within walking distance of one another for years.
In an interview with The Birmingham News in 2011, Ruth Siegler highlighted her motivations for creating “My Father’s Blessing,” a book that detailed her experience surviving the Holocaust via documents and images.
“I have all these memories,” she said. “I remember everything.”
During the course of the interview, her sister Ilse arrived. They agreed that the sisters aided one another in surviving, and their religion helped them endure.
“I always say have faith and hope,” Ilse Nathan said. “We leaned on each other and prayed together.”