'Schindler’s List' Typist Dead at 91

Mietek Pemper, the Jewish prisoner who created "Schindler's List"—a list of concentration camp workers "essential" to the Nazi war effort, which saved hundreds from extermination—has died at age 91, reports the New York Times. Pemper was secretary for the commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp, a brutal Nazi who personally executed hundreds; believing the position to be a death sentence, Pemper started plotting against him.

When Pemper learned that the Jewish labor camps were to be closed and the prisoners sent to death camps, he convinced Oskar Schindler to change his factories from making enamelware to weapons parts, the only kind of factory that would remain open, filling endless paperwork with made-up statistics to convince Nazi authorities. Pemper's life, together with accountant Itzhak Stern, formed the basis of the book Schindler's Ark, and then the Steven Spielberg movie. After World War II, Pemper became a German citizen and lived most of his life in Augsburg. Though Schindler saved his parents and brother, he was never married and left no survivors. (More Schindler's List stories.)