The story of the late Mimi Reinhardt - Oskar Schindler's secretary

Between 1942 – 1945, Mimi Reinhardt served as the personal secretary of Oskar Schindler – Righteous Among the Nations. He used his ties with the Nazi party to save some 1200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Mimi helped him compile the list of Jews whose lives were saved. 

Mimi Reinhardt was born in 1915 in the town of Wiener Neustadt in Austria. She was an only child.

In the late 1930s, before the outbreak of the war, she traveled to Krakow where she met Joseph Weitmann. They married and had a son named Sasha. The war broke out on September 1, 1939. Joseph Weitmann was murdered outside the Krakow Ghetto but Mimi and Sasha managed to survive, thanks in part to her elegant appearance and eloquent German. In 1942 Oskar Schindler heard about Mimi and offered her a position as his secretary. She ended up helping write Schindler’s list, thereby playing a role in saving hundreds of Jews.

After the war, she traveled with her son to Morocco where she met Albert Reinhardt who managed a hotel in Tangier. The family lived in Morocco until Sasha turned 18, at which point they relocated to the US. There, the couple had a daughter who later passed away due to diabetes. In 2007, after the death of her husband, Mimi decided to join Sasha and her grandchildren in Israel at the age of 92.  Upon her arrival, she told the Jewish Agency, “Schindler would have been proud of me if he had known that I came to Israel. For sixty years, I had nightmares and now they are going to end.”

In her final years, Mimi lived in the Seven Stars retirement home in Herzliya. She was an elegant woman and an excellent bridge player until her last days.

Mimi died about a year ago at the age of 107.

The Reuth Tel Aviv Rehabilitation Hospital was among the beneficiaries of her will. In consultation with her family, it was decided to earmark the money to purchase the Metaverse system for virtual reality speech therapy treatments.  It is a privilege to honor Mimi at Reuth Tel Aviv.           

May her memory be for a blessing.