Isidor Straus - Death On The Titanic

Death On The Titanic

Traveling back from a winter in Europe, mostly spent at Cap Martin in southern France, Isidor and his wife were passengers on the RMS Titanic when, on April 14, 1912, it hit an iceberg. Once it was clear Titanic was sinking, Ida refused to leave Isidor and would not get into a lifeboat. Although Isidor was offered a seat in a lifeboat too, he refused seating while there were still women and children aboard. Ida insisted her newly hired English maid, Ellen Bird, get into lifeboat #8. She gave Ellen her fur coat stating she would not be needing it. Ida is reported to have said, "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 arm in arm. Eyewitnesses described the scene as a "most remarkable exhibition of love and devotion." Both died on April 15th when the ship sank. Isidor Straus' 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 first buried in the Straus-Kohns Mausoleum at Beth-El Cemetery in Brooklyn. His body was moved to the Straus Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx in 1928. Isidor and Ida are memorialized on a cenotaph outside the mausoleum, "Many waters cannot quench love - neither can the floods drown it."

The couple are portrayed in the 1953 film Titanic and the 1958 film A Night to Remember, in scenes that are faithful to the accounts described above. In the 1997 film Titanic, the Strauses are briefly depicted kissing and holding each other in their bed as their stateroom floods with water, along with a deleted scene showing Isidor (played by Lew Palter) attempting to persuade Ida (Elsa Raven) to enter the lifeboat.