Isidor Straus, age 67, co-owner of Macy’s department store, was traveling from Germany to New York with his wife Ida as first class passengers on the RMS Titanic. As the ship was sinking, Ida reportedly would not leave Isidor and refused to get in a lifeboat, saying: “I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together.”
Isidor and Ida were last seen on deck sitting in deck chairs holding hands when a huge wave washed them into the sea. Both died on April 15 when the ship sank. Isidor Straus’s body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett and brought to Halifax, Nova Scotia where it was identified before being shipped to New York. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Ida’s body was not recovered.
The Isidor and Ida Straus Memorial is located in Straus Park, at the intersection of Broadway and West End Avenue at W. 106th Street (Duke Ellington Boulevard) in Manhattan. The park is one block from 105th St. and West End Avenue, where they resided.
An inscription reads, “Lovely and pleasant they were in their lives, and in death they were not divided.”
The Titanic, One Century Later 