Mimi Reinhardt obit

 

Mimi Reinhardt, secretary to Oskar Schindler, dies at 107

Reinhardt is mourned by her son and his family, as well as the thousands of people whose parents and grandparents she helped escape certain death.

 She was not on the list (either one).

Mimi Reinhardt, Oskar Schindler's secretary, died in Israel on April 8 at the age of 107.

Born Carmen Koppel in Vienna to a Jewish family, Mimi Reinhardt worked for Schindler during the latter half of World War II, 1942-1945, drawing up lists of Jewish workers to be employed at Schindler's factory. 

Schindler famously saved over one thousand Jews by employing them at his factories, which produced enamelware and ammunitions. In 1962, a tree was planted in his honor on the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. He was also posthumously named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem along with his wife, Emilie.

Reinhardt's skills in shorthand landed her a job in the administration of the Plaszow concentration camp, where she was deported after the evacuation of the Krakow ghetto and the death of her husband at the hands of the Nazis. There she met Schindler and became his personal secretary, assisting him in saving hundreds of her fellow Jews.

After the war, Reinhardt was reunited with her son Sasha Weitman, and the two moved to Morocco where she met her second husband. The family moved the New York City, where Reinhardt lived for the next five decades.

Weitman made aliyah in 1974 and became a professor at Tel Aviv University. In 2007, at the age of 92, Reinhardt joined her son in Israel where she lived out her last fifteen years.

Reinhardt is mourned by her son and his family, as well as the thousands of people whose parents and grandparents she helped escape certain death. 

Reinhardt died early Friday and was laid to rest Sunday in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, her son Sasha Weitman confirmed.

She was one of 1,200 Jews saved by German businessman Schindler after he bribed Nazi authorities to let him keep them as workers in his factories. The account was made into the acclaimed 1993 film “Schindler’s List” by director Steven Spielberg.

Reinhardt was born Carmen Koppel in Vienna, Austria, in 1915, and moved to Krakow, Poland, before the outbreak of World War II. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, she was confined to the Krakow ghetto before being sent to the nearby Plaszow concentration camp in 1942.