Secretary Mimi Reinhardt, who typed the Schindler’s list, dies at 107

A picture taken on November 23, 2019 in the Israeli city of Herzliya shows Mimi Reinhardt, the secretary of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

The typist who drew up the Schindler’s list -- which went on to save the lives of Jewish workers from the Holocaust -- died on April 8. She was 107.

Mimi Reinhardt was hired by German businessman Oskar Schindler in October 1944 to keep track of his employees, reported Daily Mail.

As Schindler's secretary, Reinhardt was in charge of drawing up the lists of Jewish workers from the ghetto of the Polish city of Krakow who were recruited to work at his factory, saving them from deportation to Nazi death camps.

"My grandmother, so dear and so unique, passed away at the age of 107. Rest in peace," Reinhardt's granddaughter Nina wrote in a message to relatives seen by AFP.

Austrian-born Reinhardt, herself a Jew, was recruited by Schindler himself and worked for him until 1945.

After World War II, she moved to New York before deciding to move to Israel in 2007 to join her only son, Sacha Weitman, who was then a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University.

"I feel at home," she told reporters when she landed in Israel.

Schindler, who died in 1974, was named by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as a member of the "Righteous Among the Nations" -- an honour for non-Jews who tried to save Jews from Nazi extermination.

The lists which Mimi Reinhardt compiled for him helped save the lives of some 1,300 Jews at considerable risk to his own life.

Schindler hired Reinhardt during one of his apparent recruitment drives, which were in reality guises to keep Jewish workers from being sent to gas chambers. Reinhardt knew shorthand and was hired as a typist.

Schindler's initiative was recounted in the bestselling 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and the award-winning film adaptation by Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List.

Reinhardt, who spent her last years at a nursing home north of Tel Aviv, had said she once met Spielberg but found it hard to watch the movie.

Israeli photographer Gideon Markowicz who met Reinhardt as part of a project dedicated to Holocaust survivors, spoke of an active woman.

"She took part in the activities of the nursing home and was a bridge champion. She surfed the net and monitored the stock exchange," he told AFP.

Schindler had saved over 1,300 Jewish workers from imminent death by hiring more people in his factory than he could afford and thus keeping them out of Auschwitz.

As shown in Schindler’s List, the factory owner, played by Liam Neeson, kept a careful relationship with SS region chief Amon Goeth.

Goeth enjoyed shooting Krakow-Płaszów concentration camp inmates from the balcony of his villa, the Daily Mail reported.

Reinhardt  had herself evaded death two years before this, after she was spared by Amon Goeth who wanted to defy orders stating she should be killed.
Goeth was hanged for his crimes in 1946 while Schindler died penniless in Germany in 1974.

(With inputs from AFP)