Product Description

As a child in German-occupied Poland, Roma Ligocka was known for the bright strawberry-red coat she wore against a tide of gathering darkness. Fifty years later, Roma, an artist living in Germany, attended a screening of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and instantly knew that “the girl in the red coat”—the only splash of color in the film—was her. Thus began a harrowing journey into the past, as Roma Ligocka sought to reclaim her life and put together the pieces of a shattered childhood.

The result is this remarkable memoir, a fifty-year chronicle of survival and its aftermath. With brutal honesty, Ligocka recollects a childhood at the heart of evil: the flashing black boots, the sudden executions, her mother weeping, her father vanished…then her own harrowing escape and the strange twists of fate that allowed her to live on into the haunted years after the war. Powerful, lyrical, and unique among Holocaust memoirs, The Girl in the Red Coat eloquently explores the power of evil to twist our lives long after we have survived it. It is a story for anyone who has ever known the darkness of an unbearable past—and searched for the courage to move forward into the light.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #325121 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-04
• Released on: 2003-11-04
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.25" h x .60" w x 5.45" l, .75 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As a young child, in the Krakow ghetto, Ligocka was known to everyone by the strawberry-red coat she always wore-an image that Steven Spielberg would use in Schindler's List, without knowing anything about Ligocka herself. Determined to tell her own story, Ligocka gives a harrowing, impressionistic account of her early memories of the ghetto: the men in shiny black boots with snarling dogs, the endless waiting in lines, people shot indiscriminately and her grandmother's seizure by SS officers while Ligocka hides under a table. Ligocka and her mother sneak out of the ghetto and are taken in by a Polish family; her father, taken to Auschwitz, escapes several years later. In a poignant episode, the little girl doesn't recognize this haggard specter who wants to embrace her. The memoir also describes Ligocka's youth in Communist Krakow: her career as an actress in theater and films, her struggle as an adult to confront her frightful memories and the weathering of new crises, from the passing of her parents to political turmoil in Poland. Though Ligocka's rendering of her early childhood voice isn't quite seamless (it sometimes sounds forced and too knowing), this doesn't take away from the power of her narrative, and readers may be particularly interested in her experiences as one of a tiny handful of Jewish survivors in Communist Poland. 30 b&w photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Seeing herself as the "girl in the red coat" in the film Schindler's List inspired the author to undertake this painful journey into her past. In a fascinating work that reads like a novel, Ligocka, an acclaimed artist, set and costume designer, and cousin of Roman Polanski, confronts her memories as a young Polish Jew during World War II. Although Ligocka only spends about one-third of the book on her traumatic experiences "hiding in the open" between the ages of three and seven, her experiences obviously affected her entire life, leading to depression, addiction, and an existence of constant fear. As in Julia Collins's memoir, My Father's War, Ligocka's work is a testament to both the frailty and the strength of very young children who have experienced trauma. The remaining two-thirds of this work chronicle Ligocka's life as a career woman, wife, and mother and her struggle to come to terms with her past in the artistic culture of postwar Europe. This work, already a best seller abroad, should be purchased for both public and academic libraries. Maria C. Bagshaw, Lake Erie Coll., Painesville, OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In March 1941, the Jews of Krakow, Poland, were rounded up and crammed into 320 decaying and dilapidated houses in the Krakow Ghetto. Among them were the author (then a small child), her parents, and her grandmother. Ligocka and her mother escaped from the ghetto in March 1943 and were taken into hiding by a cousin. Later they were forced to leave when their benefactor feared they would be discovered by the Nazis. Ligocka and her parents survived but her grandmother did not. The author also recounts her ordeal of living in Communist Poland after World War II, her career in the theater and films, her marriage and divorce, and the birth of her son. In 1989 Ligocka (a cousin of Roman Polanski) returned to Poland for the first time in 30 years. Previously published in Germany and England, this is not only a Holocaust memoir but also a story of one woman's quest for contentment. George Cohen
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