What is the significance of the little girl in the red coat in the film Schindle

1. 67

   Alana Warrenposted 11 years ago

   What is the significance of the little girl in the red coat in the film Schindler's list?
   
   With the majority of this epic drama being filmed in black and white, the little girl is the only person to be seen in colour. Therefore there must be some significant meaning in why the director chose to portray this particular image in red among the desired black and white back drop.
   
   

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2. 96

   chef-de-jourposted 11 years ago

   A hauntingly profound movie. This little girl in red is based on a true story, an account given at the Nuremberg trials by one of the witnesses, which tells of a little girl in a new coat, wandering around amongst the horrors of the ghetto in Cracow. The Nazis aren't too concerned about her because after all they know that everyone in that place will eventually die. Schindler catches sight of her as he looks down on the ghetto from a hill.
   So in the movie she moves freely, like some phantom, an innocent embodiment of a human, still pure and unaffected it seems by the murders going on around her. Spielberg put her in to represent all that might have been and to heighten the contrasts between mass liquidation and individual innocence.
   Millions were murdered in the most inhuman way and the little girl is still there, her expression neutral, her dignity just about intact.
   What a movie - a story that just had to be told and one that should be repeated again and again and again, without end.

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3. 67

   Alana Warrenposted 11 years ago

   I do believe this film to be poignant, especially because I think it emulates a lot of what is happening in many countries today. Effectively The Holocaust was genocide on a vast and (what was deemed by the Nazis) permissible scale. The atrocities which these individuals faced were powerfully displayed throughout Schindler’s List. My initial thoughts of the little girl in red were that she represented the epitome of innocence. The idea of her being singled out amongst the violence is highlighting her isolation and ignorance to the bloodshed that surrounds her. This often suggested to be a reference to the lack of action of the allied forces saving the Jewish community from there fate. A strong feeling amongst the allied forces was that the reports of The Holocaust and the accounts of concentration camps such as Auschwitz were greatly exaggerated. It wasn’t until the end of the war, the German surrender and the liberation of the Jews by the Allied powers that the sheer scale of the carnage was revealed. Her death implies the death of innocence and hope amongst the Jewish community lost to the brutality of the Nazi party.

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