The big-hearted mystery woman who left an Israeli college $100,000 upon her death has been identified -- and she is described as an "eccentric hippie" who lived simply, but was not homeless as school officials said.
Ida Fischer, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, bequeathed the large sum to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the school's public relations director Yefet Ozery said. She had no known connection to the school.
Fischer, according to interviews and court records, was a reclusive woman but wasn't homeless and relying off handouts from strangers, the Daily News reported. Instead, that was a picture painted by the university following the sizable gift.
When she died at the age of 92, it was discovered Fischer had accumulated close to $300,000. But she wasn't living out out a shopping cart in Manhattan. Instead, the thrifty woman, who was mostly estranged from her family, lived a simple life in a one-bedroom apartment in Turtle Bay, the newspaper said.
To her, material things meant nothing," her friend Gabor Szanto told the Daily News. "She was wearing the same jacket the day I met her and the day she died."
Asked why Fischer would donate so much to a university she had not attended, Szanto said, "She was a very religious Jew."
Her friends also said she would have been horrified to have been called a bag lady.
Little is known about how she was able to save nearly $300,000. She died two years ago but the university learned of the generous donation just three months ago and received the money this month.
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The money will go toward scholarships for medical research students, which is what the woman had requested, Ozery said.
