Schindler’s List: the little girl in the red coat, cousin of Roman Polanski, really existed

The project of bringing to the screen the life of the German Oskar Schindler (1908-1974), who saved the lives of 1,100 to 1,200 Jews during the war by having them work in his factories, has long been circulating in Hollywood. Famous director of comedies and dramas, Billy Wilder, who lost his mother in Auschwitz, considered doing so by adapting Schindler’s Lista novel-testimony by Thomas Keneally published in 1982. Before having to hand over to Steven Spielberg who, in 1993, with Schindler’s List “the film” the most beautiful memory assignment. At a time when Holocaust survivors were still testifying in certain schools but the memory of the Holocaust was beginning to decline, particularly among the youngest, Spielberg, a popular director, reached the greatest number through a moving documented story. Carried by the intense games of Liam Neeson, Ben Kingley and Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s Listscheduled for this Friday, September 22, 2023, at 9:05 p.m., on France 5, is also crossed by a silhouette dressed in red, who haunts memories…

Reviews and highlights around Schindler’s List

When the film was released, almost unanimously praised, Spielberg was however criticized for having fictionalized the unspeakable, for having fictionalized what could not be. Author of the exceptional documentary Holocaust, Claude Lanzmann hardly appreciated Spielberg’s bias which, according to him, amounted to betraying history. According to Lanzmann: “Spielberg cannot tell Schindler’s story without also telling what the Holocaust was; and how can he say what the Holocaust was by telling the story of a German who saved 1,300 Jews, since the overwhelming majority of Jews were not saved? Another criticism was the use of dramatic scenes, dishonestly playing on suspense to “take the audience hostage”. Thus, the sequence where the new deportees are brought to the showers with the suspicion that they will be gassed – which will not be the case. But how can we reach as many people as possible without “playing” on emotion? Other images thus remain imprinted forever in the memory of spectators. Like that of the little red girl. This little girl, dressed in a red coat, has a double function: she introduces an ambiguous element of color into a black and white film; she is the one who allows Schindler, who distinguishes her from the flood of Jews from the Krakow ghetto, liquidated by the Nazis, to personalize this drama; to become aware of it. His action will result from the perception of the drama experienced by this little girl and her family…

The survivor in red

This little girl who appears in the film with a red coat is not the fruit of a screenwriter’s imagination. She really existed and her name was Roma Ligocka. She was known in the Warsaw ghetto for her famous red coat. But, unlike the one that represents her in the film, she survived the Shoah. Discovering Steven Spielberg’s film, she felt a shock, the past resurfaced, and she published her memoirs in 2002, entitled The little girl in the red coat . More anecdotally, Roma Ligocka, an 84-year-old painter, is also the cousin of filmmaker Roman Polanski. Who, a prisoner for a time in the Krakow ghetto, managed to escape before surviving, unlike his mother, the tragedy of the Shoah…