Mimi Reinhardt | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Carmen Koppel (1915-01-15)15 January 1915 |
| Died | 8 April 2022(2022-04-08) (aged 107) |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Occupation | Secretary |
| Known for | Author ofSchindler's list |
| Children | 2 |
Mimi Reinhardt (bornCarmen Koppel; known asCarmen Weitmannc. 1936–c. 1950; 15 January 1915 – 8 April 2022) was anAustrian Jewish secretary. She worked forOskar Schindler and typed his list ofJewish workers to recruit for his factory.[1][2]
Carmen Koppel was born to Emil and Frieda Koppel inWiener Neustadt,Austria-Hungary.[3] She learned shorthand to take notes better during her language studies at theUniversity of Vienna. In Vienna,Austria, she met her future husband, whom she followed from Austria toKraków,Poland, in 1936. Their son, Sascha Weitmann, was born there in June 1939.[4]
Carmen Weitmann and her husband managed to evacuate their son and her grandmother toHungary during theNazi occupation ofPoland. She and her husband were arrested; he was shot at the gate of theKraków ghetto while trying to escape. At the time, she was 30 years old. After the liquidation of the ghetto, she was transported with other Jews to thePlaszow camp. As she knew shorthand, she was employed in the camp administration, where she metOskar Schindler. She knew he treated his Jewish workers well and became Schindler's secretary. After Schindler had asked theSS camp commanderAmon Göth for more workers, she began to type out the list of workers from the ghetto of the Polish city of Krakow so that they could then be transferred to theBrünnlitz subcamp, where Oskar Schindler continued his armaments business.[4][5]
The train that was supposed to take the Jewish workers on the list from Plaszow to Brünnlitz in the fall of 1944 was diverted toAuschwitz. Mimi and the other "Schindlerjuden" were there for about two weeks and they described this time as "straight out ofDante'sInferno". At the time, Schindler was trying to get "his" Jews from Auschwitz to Brünnlitz. Due to his help, 1,200 Jews survived there until the liberation in May 1945.[4]
After the war, Weitmann found her son inHungary and moved with him toTangier International Zone,Morocco. There she met and married her second husband, a hotel manager surnamed Reinhardt. In 1957, the family moved to the United States and lived inNew York.[6] She had a second child, a daughter, with her second husband, but her daughter died of an illness at the age of 49. In 2007, at age 92, Reinhardt moved toHerzliya, Israel, to live with her son, Sacha Weitman, who was then a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University.[7][1] She died there in 2022, at age 107, in aretirement home.[8]