2 sisters who survived the Holocaust died days apart in Alabama

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Two sisters, Ruth Scheuer Siegler and Ilse Scheuer Nathan, who survived the Holocaust, died days apart in Alabama.

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According to The Associated Press, the Alabama Holocaust Education Center announced that Ruth Scheuer Siegler died on Saturday at the age of 95 and her sister, Ilse Scheuer Nathan, died at the age of 98 10 days earlier on August 23.

Both Siegler and Nathan were born in Germany in the 1930s when Adolf Hitler rose to power, according to the AP. Both survived the Nazi concentration camps together but lost their parents and their older brother.

In 1944, both Ruth and Ilse were selected to be workers at the Birkenau Nazi camp where they were separated from their mother, according to a biography of their lives per the AP.

Al.com reported that the sisters were at five Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Ruth and Ilse were both faced with brutality, hunger and were forced to march in February 1945, according to Al.com. The Russian army arrived, and they survived it. Both weighed about 80 pounds at the end of the war, and they made their way to America.

According to the AP, both Ruth and Ilse married other Holocaust survivors in 1949. Ruth and Walter Siegler moved to Birmingham, Alabama in 1960 where Ilse and Walter Nathan were already living. Over the years, the two women shared their stories and taught lessons about the Holocaust.

The Alabama Holocaust Education Center told Al.com per the AP that the two women were inseparable. They also said that once Ilse had died, the other one was ready.

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