The Girl in the Red Coat

the long version

"In a movie that tears at your heart there is one moment in particular you will never forget. Filmed entirely in black and white, Schindler's List contains one spot of color, and it appears when the Jews in the Krakow Ghetto are being rounded up and deported to the camps. At one point you watch this panorama of horror from a distance, and your eye (and Schindler's) follows the figure of a girl in a bright red coat. She seems lost, then suddenly purposeful, first skipping distractedly, then cowering in terror: beautiful, helpless, miraculous, perilously fragile - the spark of life itself - and finally...gone forever.". "When Roma Ligocka was invited to the film's premiere in Poland, she had no idea what to expect. What could Steven Spielberg know about the Holocaust? Yet when she saw that spot of color, Ligocka was suddenly overwhelmed. She had been the same age as the girl during the days of the Krakow Ghetto, and she had worn a strawberry red coat her grandmother had made for her. Eerily, almost unimaginably, more than depicting history the film was reflecting her life. She felt that she had been - that she still was - the girl in the red coat."--BOOK JACKET.