Sisters who survived Holocaust and ‘remained inseparable’ die days apart in Alabama
.png "Two inseparable sisters, Ruth Scheuer Siegler and Ilse Scheuer Nathan, died just 10 days apart in Alabama after surviving the Holocaust, losing their family and immigrating to the United States.")
Two sisters who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to America together died just 11 days apart, according to the Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
Ruth Scheuer Siegler died on Sept. 3 at age 95 after her sister, Ilse Scheuer Nathan, had passed less than two weeks before at age 98, said the AHEC in a Facebook post.
The sisters lived in Birmingham, Alabama within walking distance of one another, according to the AHEC. They spent their lives by each other’s side, from laboring in concentration camps to immigrating to America for a new start.
German-born Jews, Ilse and Ruth were only 9 and 6, respectively, when Hitler came to power in 1933. By 1940, their father was sent to Westerbork camp in Holland, and the sisters, their mother and brother voluntarily followed to work to avoid deportation, says the AHEC. The family was later sent to concentration camps after their father was arrested because he didn’t remove his cap for a German officer.
They ended up at Birkenau — the largest of the more than 40 camps that made up Auschwitz, according to the memorial’s website. There, the sisters were separated from their mother and never saw her again, said the AHEC biographies of the sisters. And, in what turned out to be the last time they saw him, their father gave them the address of a family member in the U.S.
“Ilse and Ruth were so close in the camps, that to avoid confusion, friends would call them each Ilse-Ruth,” the AHEC said on their website biography of Ruth. The organization’s post about Ilse’s death said the sisters “remained inseparable throughout the war.”
After working at another concentration camp in Poland, surviving a four-week death march toward the Baltic Sea, recovering from diseases and running away from a Russian hospital via coal train, they re-started their lives in Holland with some of their mother’s surviving family. Their brother, who had been sent to a camp in Germany, died days before liberation, said the AHEC.
With their father in mind, in 1946 they moved with a cousin to Brooklyn, NY. There, they worked in a glove factory, learned English and married fellow Holocaust survivors, per the AHEC website. In 1949, Ilse moved to Birmingham, and about a decade later, Ruth followed her there.
“Ruth was blessed and cursed with the ability to remember almost everything, including the horrors of her wartime experiences and the losses of those dearest to her,” said the ACHS Facebook post.
According to the organization, she wrote a memoir called “My Father’s Blessing” and frequently told her story at schools. The book was dedicated to her “children and grandchildren, so that the suffering I endured, along with millions of others, will never be forgotten.”
Both women were widowed but are survived by their children and grandchildren.
“I can forgive, but I can never forget. It happened, and people need to always remember that.” Ilse once said, according to the ACHS.
This story was originally published September 9, 2022 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Sisters who survived Holocaust and ‘remained inseparable’ die days apart in Alabama."
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