Esther D. Haneman, 86, survivor of the Holocaust

Esther Dobrowolska Haneman, 86, of Wynnefield Heights, a Holocaust survivor, died of heart failure Monday at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Mrs. Haneman grew up in Belchatow, Poland. Her father owned the town's mill and bakery, and three maids tended to the family of 10.

In 1942, the Nazis turned Jews out of their homes in the town. Mrs. Haneman's mother, three youngest siblings and paternal grandparents were herded with others onto trucks.

It wasn't until 1990 that Mrs. Haneman learned from researchers that her mother and the others had been killed by poison gas.

She and four sisters and her father were sent to the Lodz Ghetto, where she sewed military uniforms. In 1944, they were moved to Auschwitz, where the sisters were separated from their father, whom they never saw again. Later, the girls worked in an ammunition factory - the frequent explosions caused Mrs. Haneman to go deaf in one ear, said her daughter Louise.

In the winter of 1945, the factory was evacuated as the Allies approached and the workers were moved to Terezin in Czechoslovakia. The camp had been used in a Nazi effort to dupe foreign dignitaries and the International Red Cross; propaganda movies showed Jews playing soccer and reading novels. In reality, after being filmed joking with the commandant, children were often sent to their death.

Mrs. Haneman and her four sisters remained at Terezin for 12 weeks. "Everybody was looking like skeletons, without hair, shaved down, just big eyes," she told an Inquirer reporter in 2004. She was sick with tuberculosis and had no sense of time, she said. That changed on May 6, 1945, when the girls opened the barracks doors to see Russians marching in, their rifles trained on Nazis.

Mrs. Haneman remembered the Russians shouting, "You are free." One of Mrs. Haneman's younger sisters ran up and yanked a German woman's long hair. The Russians offered the Jews guns. One prisoner, a woman, picked up a rifle and started shooting.

Mrs. Haneman said she was so weak, she couldn't even stand. She sat down on the grass and cried.

On a train that took survivors to a displaced persons camp in Germany, Mrs. Haneman met her future husband, Jan Haneman. He spoke English and found work with the U.S. Army. The Hanemans married in 1946 and emigrated to the United States in 1950, eventually settling in Queens.

Mrs. Haneman was a homemaker, sewed her children's clothes and handled the family's finances. Her husband was an accountant in the garment industry. He died in 1996. Two years later, Mrs. Haneman moved to Philadelphia to be closer to her family.

She was very artistic, her daughter said, and reproduced Old Masters' paintings in needlepoint. She was open about sharing her wartime experiences and credited her survival to luck and the need to be there for her sisters, her daughter said.

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Haneman is survived by daughters Jenny Haneman and Mimi Weitzman; two sisters; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be at noon today at Sinai Chapels in Fresh Meadows, N.Y. Burial will be in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Fresh Meadows.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, Washington, D.C. 20238. Shiva will be observed in the Weitzman home in Cherry Hill.