Longtime UWSer Mimi Reinhard, Writer Of Real Schindler's List, Dies

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Mimi Reinhard, a concentration camp survivor who typed the names of more than 1,000 Jewish people to create what became known as "Schindler's List" and who lived on the Upper West Side for around 50 years after World War II, died on Friday in Israel. She was 107.

Her granddaughter released a statement on April 8 announcing Reinhard's death. She was laid to rest Sunday in Herzliya.

Reinhard had lived in Tel Aviv since 2007 to be closer to her son.

In 1944, Reinhard was being held in a Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. She was allowed to work in the camp office, though, due to her flawless German and her ability to take shorthand, according to The Washington Post.

During the period, she was given the job to compile a list of Jewish prisoners that worked in factories owned by German businessman Oskar Schindler.

She typed the names of more than 1,000 Jewish people, including her own and those of two friends, according to the Washington Post.

The collection of names would become what is known as "Schindler's List."

Schindler would go on to bribe Nazi authorities to let him keep the names on the list as workers in his factories, saving them from almost certain death. The story was eventually made into the 1993 film "Schindler's List" by director Steven Spielberg.

Reinhard was born Carmen Koppel in Vienna, Austria, in 1915. She studied languages and literature at the University of Vienna and was married by 1936. She and her husband had a son in 1939, who they smuggled to Hungary to live with relatives during the war, reported the Washington Post.

However, she and her husband were arrested and confined to Krakow's Jewish ghetto, according to the Washington Post. Her husband was killed trying to escape and Reinhard was placed in a forced-labor camp.

When the war ended, Reinhard reunited with her son in Morocco for several years, remarried, and also had a daughter. She moved to the Upper West Side in 1957 and lived in the neighborhood for the next 50 years.

Very little is known about her life on the UWS, and her connection to Schindler was only revealed in 2007 when she was interviewed by a Jewish resettlement agency about her wartime experiences.

While in New York, she maintained her connections with other Jewish people saved by Schindler, but never told strangers or new friends about her earlier life, according to the Washington Post.

“To go with Schindler was no guarantee of anything. We didn’t believe that Schindler would really succeed in saving us," Reinhard told an Israeli newspaper in 2007. "He was just taking us to a different camp. Who knew? We took a chance only because we believed in Schindler.”