A symbol of tragedy: The girl in the red coat
(Picture: Universal)The woman who once played ‘the girl in the red coat’ in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List is now helping Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border.
Those who saw Schindler’s List will have never forgotten the girl in the red coat. In Steven Spielberg’s three-hour epic about the Holocaust, filmed entirely in black and white, the young girl’s coat is the only glimmer of colour.
As she walks through the streets of Kraków in Poland – the location of one of the largest Jewish ghettos in World War Two – she quietly slips between scenes of mass shootings and hysteria. The young girl draws the eye of the protagonist, businessman Oskar Schindler, who is viewing the scene from a hill above. Her red coat is a straightforward symbol of loss, innocence and Jewish suffering. It became one of cinema’s most memorable and haunting shots.
Now, almost 30 years later, the actress who played the young girl is at the Polish border coordinating volunteers as they welcome Ukrainian refugees, and she’s being called a hero. On her Instagram Oliwia Dabrowska posted a picture of her younger self in Spielberg’s film, with the caption, “She was always the symbol of hope. Let her be it again.” She also added the Russian and Polish flags and a heart emoji.
In another post where she was sharing news of her work at the border, she said, “I can’t tell you everything I saw there, because I don’t have the right words in my mind.”
On a later live stream on Instagram, the actor also said, “I will do everything I can, I will never forget these people, those faces, those eyes, I will never forget what I’ve seen.”
Schindler’s List is based on the true story of Czech businessman Oskar Schindler who used his munitions factory as a means to save hundreds of Jewish lives. As the Nazis tried to send the Jews to Auschwitz, Schindler persuaded and bribed them to allow his factory to keep working, and thus protected his workers from sure death at the concentration camp.
In the film, the young girl – spoiler – dies. In one particularly awful scene, Jews are being forced to dig up dead bodies so that they can be burnt. As people run past with carts, we see the red coat on her lifeless body.
But in real life, the girl in the red coat is both likely to be a real person, and she, happily, lived. Roma Ligocka managed to hide away with a Polish family. It was only decades later, when she watched Spielberg’s film that she realised she was seeing herself on screen, and that she needed to properly come to terms with her childhood. She wrote a book about her traumatic experiences.
Schindler’s List won seven Academy Awards in 1994 including best picture.
