Two sisters who survived the Holocaust as girls and moved to the United States afterward died within days of each other in their adopted home in Alabama.
Authorities in Alabama said Ruth Scheuer Siegler died Saturday at the age of 95. Her sister, Ilse Scheuer Nathan, died 10 days ago at the age of 98.
The women were born in Germany and were girls when Adolf Hitler came to power in the 1930s.
Having lost their parents and older brother in the Holocaust but surviving the Nazi death camps themselves, the two women were inseparable, a statement said.
“They were always together,” said Ann Mollengarden, director of education for the Alabama Holocaust Education Center. “When Ilse died, I think Ruth was ready.”
In early 1944, the girls were selected as laborers in the Birkenau camp and separated from their mother, whom they never saw again, according to a biography of the women.
They last saw their father in the camp and their brother died in a camp in Germany.
“The girls worked carrying bricks from one end to the other for hours. Ilse also sewed gun covers and uniforms. Working near the crematorium ovens, those many shoes. For the first time, there they realized that their fellow prisoners were being killed and burned,” says a biography.
