Photo. Shoes from the children killed in Auschwitz, Krakow - remains of the Holocaust.
The movie tells the tragic story about the Holocaust in Krakow, expressed through a three-hour black and white film. It`s especially strong because the black and white images gives it a impression of being a documentary from the time it’s happened. At the same time the movie is made symbolic. The colour image of the girl is one of only four colour images. As shown on the movie the girl wanders alone amid the horror and panic. She is wearing a red coat which draws my eyes towards her even when she is one of a hundred people in a wide shot. But in the end: what did really happen to her?
In the movie Schindler sees the little girl wearing a red coat. The red coat symbolizes the fact that Oskar Schindler has opened his eyes to the cruelty which the Nazis are committing against the Jews. Unfortunately Schindler didn’t manage to save the little girl. Later in the film, the girl is seen among the dead. She is recognized only by the red coat she is still wearing.
Although it was not intended, this character is coincidentally very similar to Roma Ligocka, who was known in the Kraków Ghetto for her red coat. Ligocka, unlike her red-coated counterpart, survived the Holocaust. After the film was released, she wrote and published her own story, The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir (2002, in translation). Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler's_List
For more information of the little girl in red in the movie: http://auschwitz.dk/redgirl.htm
Aaron Schwartz, a Polish Jew who miraculously survived the KZ camp Plaszow and the Holocaust, later recalled the slaughter of the Cracow ghetto in Holocaust Testimonies, edited by Joseph J. Preil, and he described the terrible fate of a blond little girl: For more information:http://auschwitz.dk/redgirl.htm
Over one million children under the age of sixteen died in the Holocaust, and she was one of them!
Stein Morten Lund, 29 July 2009
Additional information
Read more about Krakow on our global travelguide www.TravelExplorations.com
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