82 The Economist April 30th 2022
Obituary Mimi Reinhard
Sometimein theearlyautumnof 1944 MimiWeitmann,as she
then was, added her name to a list. She thought she would take
the risk. Unfortunately she had to use the horrible first name, Car
men, which her operaloving father had given her; “Mimi”, from
“La Bohème”, was the much nicer nickname they settled on later.
Sadly, too, she had to add the surname of her dead husband, Yozsi
Weitmann, her love since university, who had been shot by the
Germans at the gate of the Krakow ghetto as he had tried to escape.
That had happened in 1942. She had been widowed in her 20s,
left with a baby son, Sasha, whom she and Yozsi had managed to
smuggle to Hungary with her grandmother. She was very uncer
tain when, or even whether, she would see either of them again. As
she typed “Carmen Weitmann”, there seemed to be nothing left of
herself. Her old life as carefree Mimi, in a Vienna where Jews were
integrated and the word “Aryan” unnecessary, was too long ago
and far away. She was now in a blank place, among the dead.
At least she was no longer in the ghetto, which had been liqui
dated anyway, with those too ill or old to work simply shot in the
street. She was in the Plaszow labour camp, to which most of Kra
kow’s Jews had now been moved. There were horrors in Plaszow,
too: a small child killed for refusing to take off his clothes, the dig
ging of a massgrave which was also meant to be hers. But she was
given a relatively sheltered deskjob because, being Austrian, her
German was perfect, and because she had learned shorthand from
a stenography course. Not that these were much use for taking
down and typing up—as she was tasked to—a list that eventually
ran to 1,200 names.
The list had been growing for a while. At first it had around
1,000 names, those of the Jews who worked in Oskar Schindler’s
German Enamel Factory in Krakow. Then it got longer. It was add
ed to by Mietek Pemper, secretary to Amon Goeth, the vicious
camp commandant, and by Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant.Then Schindler himself (and his wife) contributed yet more, the
relatives and friends of his employees and, it seemed, anyone he
could think of. She typed them up as he asked her. In the end there
were at least seven versions, possibly even nine, and her job was to
make each one presentable.
Every name was Jewish (with “Ju.” typed before it), even though
Schindler was not. These were meant to be essential workers in his
factory, which he was going to move from Plaszow (where it had
moved from Krakow) westward to Brünnlitz, in his native Sude
tenland, and repurpose to make arms. But as Mimi typed the date
ofbirth column she could see there were children on it, and as she
typed the “skills” column she could spot photographers and rabbis
among the metalworkers, so something else was clearly going on.
Even her own qualification, Schreibkraft, “typist”, looked odd, es
pecially as she added it with two slow fingers. Typing was some
thing she had never learned.
She did not have much direct contact with Schindler, but liked
him as a boss. He was charming and outgoing, and treated his Jew
ish workers kindly, not like scum. Perhaps even too kindly, for he
was a great womaniser, with several pretty secretaries besides her,
and got into trouble once for kissing a Jewish girl on the cheek at
his birthday party. Maybe she was there because he liked her cool
blonde elegance, rather than her mind. She knew, too, that he was
very rich, and struck deals with the Nazi highups all the time by
bribing them with blackmarket luxuries to get better conditions
and more food for “his” Jews, as he called them. But that sounded
patronising as well as protective, as if they were just cogs in his
factory, since Jewish slavelabour was cheap. She also could not
forget that he was a thoroughgoing Nazi, an ssman, who some
times spent whole nights carousing with the officers.
In short, her boss was no angel. And there was something chill
ing about the list, with its constant repetition of number, race,
name, skill. Perhaps he did not mean to save “his” Jews after all,
but simply move them to another camp, a fatal one. His closeness
to Goeth, though it was tactical, was worrying. Some people, she
knew, had refused to let their names be put on the list for those
reasons. She decided, though, that she would trust him. She added
her name partly to be useful to him, by swelling the numbers.
Then she added three friends as well.
That was a gamble, and for one terrifying moment she seemed
to have bet the wrong way. Three hundred of the women and girls
on the list, including her, were transferred by mistake to Ausch
witz, where they endured two weeks that reminded her (from her
languageandliterature studies) of Dante’s “Inferno”. With even
more bribery, and threats too, Schindler got them out. In the end
the list and the transfers worked, and everyone was saved.
She restarted her life then, moving to Morocco, marrying Al
bert Reinhard, reclaiming her son and settling first in New York,
which she loved, and then in her 90s in Israel. Of the time with
Schindler, and the list, she said little or nothing over those years.
When Steven Spielberg’s film appeared in 1993 she was invited,
with the other Schindlerjuden, to the premiere, but left before the
screening. The memory was still too fresh. When at last she felt
able to see it, she approved of the casting but not of the prisoners.
They were too welldressed, not demeaned in rags.
Schindler, she heard, had died in 1974 without a penny to his
soul. He had spent all his money on saving and feeding his work
ers, and was never reimbursed as he hoped. His reward was post
humous, to be recognised at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as righteous
among the nations, and by Mimi Reinhard as a Mensch.
They had met one last time, on a sunny day in Vienna around
1960, when she was visiting an aunt. As they passed a café a voice
called out “Carmen Weitmann!” and it was Schindler, drinking
with other Schindlerjuden. They all dined together and in the taxi
he hugged her, proclaiming everyone “my Jews” again. But she
could forgive him that, as well as the painful “Carmen Weitmann”.
This was the name that had saved her, the one on his list. nOne name moreMimi Reinhard (née Koppel, then Weitmann) died on
April 8th, aged 107