The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir by Roma Ligocka, Iris Von Finckenstein

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 Spielbergs Schindlers List, and instantly knew that the girl in the red coatthe only splash of color in the filmwas 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 vanishedthen 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 pastand searched for the courage to move forward into the light.

Author: Roma Ligocka, Iris Von Finckenstein

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 304

Publisher: Delta

Publication Date: 2003-11-04