Ilse Nathan and Ruth Siegler, sisters and Holocaust survivors, died 11 days apart — Ilse Scheuer Nathan at her home in Birmingham, on August 23, at age 98, and Ruth Scheuer Siegler in a hospital on Sept. 3, at age 95.

The family’s odyssey through the Nazi killing machine began in August 1939, when the sisters traveled with their mother to the Netherlands, where Mr. Scheuer had escaped a year earlier after Kristallnacht. The war started in September and Dutch borders were closed to those seeking passage to England. Their journey began in Westerbork, a transit camp, where they stayed for two years before being transferred to the Theresienstadt labor camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. In early 1944, they were transferred to Birkenau, and then again to camps in Stutthof and Praust, Poland.

In February 1945, with Soviet forces approaching, the few surviving prisoners were abandoned and freed. They returned to the Netherlands and arrived in the United States in 1946, married fellow survivors, and lived near each other for the rest of their lives. Both sisters became active in Holocaust education, speaking to school and community groups.