Two sisters in Alabama who survived the Holocaust as girls recently died just days 10 days of each other.
On Tuesday, the Alabama Holocaust Education Center announced the passing of 95-year-old Ruth Scheuer Siegler, who died on Saturday.
The center said that Siegler's sister, Ilse Scheuer Nathan, had passed away on Aug. 23 at the age of 98.
The sisters had "a special bond both before, during, and after the Holocaust," the center said in a statement.
According to the center, the two sisters were born in Germany and lived in "relative peace and comfort until November 1938" before their family escaped to Holland in an attempt to obtain visas to the U.S.
But before they could escape to the U.S., World War II broke out, and they were trapped in Holland, eventually being placed in a concentration camp in 1942, the center said.
In 1944, the family was transported to Auschwitz. While there, the sisters became separated from their mother and never saw her again, the center said.
According to the center, the girls last saw their father at Auschwitz, who gave them the address of a cousin in America and poignantly blessed them before they separated.
The center said that their brother Ernest died days before liberation while at a camp in Germany.
According to the center, in early 1945, the girls were liberated by Russian soldiers, and by July 1946, they arrived in Mobile, Alabama, before traveling to Omaha, eventually settling in New York.
They both married, and in 1949, Nathan moved to Birmingham, the center said. According to the center, Siegler and her late husband moved to Birmingham in 1960 so she could be closer to her sister.
