Red Genia

[Louis VI the Fat]

"Red Genia" appears once more after that incident. During the clearing out of the Krakow ghetto, she is caught up with the others. Dr. Schindel, her uncle and one of the Schindlerjuden (and who probably recounted this incident) notices her because of her bright red coat, but she somehow eludes the SS guards and sidles away, back to the ghetto where she goes back into hiding before being picked up by Schindel. That's the last we see of her in the novel. Further analysis of the novel here.

I've seen the movie, never read the book. In the film, the girl in red dies, in a powerful image of black-and-white with just the red of her coat in colour. The film does not follow the novel in the fate of the girl in red.

(I'm quite sure this is tossed about as a great victory for the deniers. Perhaps she also got a date wrong, mixed up March 12th with March the 14th somewhere, 'which is further proof that blahblahblah')

~~o~~o~~<<oOo>>~~o~~o~~

The colour red in the movie is highly symbolic. The red of the bloodshed, symbolising the fate of those murdered. Quite striking too in an otherwise black-and-white film. In real life, the colour of her coat may have had far reaching consequences, more important than cinematographic and symbolic considerations.

The colour is coincidental, it was not a real coat, but was made for the girl from a leftover skirt. A triviality, a coincidence. But with far-reaching consequences.
At first, it endagered the girl, sticking out like a sore thumb. An easily identifiable victim. Two other consequences however, more favourable:

"Red Genia," as she is called, is the young girl in red whom Schindler, from his horse, sees amid the confusion during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March of 1943. Schindler does not know who she is, but it is learned that she is staying with the Dresners after the Polish couple living in the countryside find it too risky to look after her; her parents had been rounded up by the SS and taken away. "Redcap," as she is called by the Dresner boys, is a first cousin of Mrs. Dresner. She is schooled by her Polish caretakers to pretend not to be Jewish but Polish. Schindler wonders why the SS men do not execute her immediately but steer her back in line when she breaks free. He later realizes that this means that they recognize that she—like all witnesses—is to be executed.

The red drew the attention of Schindler, forced his eyes focused on the girl. This close attention paid is what made him understand. What made him realise the true nature of the events. The red coat may have been responsible for his saving 1100 Jews.


Secondly, the red made the little girl look cute, irresistable. It played a part in the decision of the Polish farmers to take her in. How could they abandon a sweet little girl like that to her fate?


Peculiar, how a seemingly trivial thing like the colour of one's coat can decide over life and death.

[Pannonian]

Secondly, the red made the little girl look cute, irresistable. It played a part in the decision of the Polish farmers to take her in. How could they abandon a sweet little girl like that to her fate?


Peculiar, how a seemingly trivial thing like the colour of one's coat can decide over life and death.[/LEFT]

There's an incident which IIRC is partially dramatised in the film. The bit I remember is Poldek Pfefferberg clicking his heels in front of Amon Goeth. Leading up to that, Pfefferberg had seen an SS man, possibly Goeth himself, setting dogs on a woman and her 2-3 year old child. The SS man took the child and splattered it against a wall, before shooting the mother. If Ligocka were Red Genia, she would have been a similar age at the time of the Aktion described.

Taking off his surgical coat, Dr Schindel rushed to the square and saw her almost at once, sitting on the grass, affecting composure within the wall of guards. Dr Schindel knew how faked the performance was, having had to get up often enough to hush her night screams.

....

She maintained her part-stumbling, part-ceremonial bluffer's pace all the way to Pankiewicz's corner and round it, keeping to the blind side of the street. Dr Schindel repressed the urge to applaud. Though the performance deserved an audience, it would by its nature be destroyed by one.