Editing Schindler's List (section)

=== The girl in red ===
[[File:Schindlers list red dress.JPG|thumb|upright=1.25|Schindler sees a girl in red during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. The red coat is one of the few instances of color used in this predominantly black and white film.]]
While the film is shot primarily in black and white, a red coat is used to distinguish a little girl in the scene depicting the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. Later in the film, Schindler sees her exhumed dead body, recognizable only by the red coat she is still wearing. Spielberg said the scene was intended to symbolize how members of the highest levels of government in the United States knew the Holocaust was occurring, yet did nothing to stop it. He said: "It was as obvious as a little girl wearing a red coat, walking down the street, and yet nothing was done to bomb the German rail lines. Nothing was being done to slow down&nbsp;... the annihilation of European Jewry. So that was my message in letting that scene be in color."{{sfn|Schickel|2012|pp=161–162}} Andy Patrizio of ''[[IGN]]'' notes that the point at which Schindler sees the girl's dead body is the point at which he changes, no longer seeing "the ash and soot of burning corpses piling up on his car as just an annoyance".{{sfn|Patrizio|2004}} Professor [[André H. Caron]] of the [[Université de Montréal]] wonders if the red symbolizes "innocence, hope or the red blood of the Jewish people being sacrificed in the horror of the Holocaust".{{sfn|Caron|2003}}

The girl was portrayed by Oliwia Dąbrowska, three years old at the time of filming. Spielberg asked Dąbrowska not to watch the film until she was eighteen, but she watched it when she was eleven, and says she was "horrified".{{sfn|Gilman|2013}} Upon seeing the film again as an adult, she was proud of the role she played.{{sfn|Gilman|2013}} [[Roma Ligocka]], who says she was known in the Kraków Ghetto for her red coat, feels the character might have been based on her. Ligocka, unlike her fictional 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).{{sfn|Ligocka|2002}} Alternatively, according to her relatives who were interviewed in 2014, the girl may have been inspired by Kraków resident Genya Gitel Chil.{{sfn|Rosner|2014}}