The inspiration to write this brilliantly received book was the girl in the red coat in the film Schindler’s List, in whom Roma Ligocka recognized herself. She took a child’s perspective to describe all the painful experiences she had struggled to forget: her childhood in the ghetto, the fear, humiliation, and the death of loved ones. We also learn of her fate after the war: games with her cousin, Roman Polański, and her friend, Ryszard Horowitz, her fleeting fascination for communism, the world of Krakow’s Bohemia, her friendship with Piotr Skrzynecki, her numerous romances, and finally, her immigration and career in show business. She reveals her long struggle with the depression resulting from wartime trauma, her addiction to medication, and her long road to rehabilitation. This book will leave no one indifferent. In reading it, one would like to have the comforting awareness that this is only literary fiction, yet, unfortunately, it is the real tale of a generation broken by the war.

“This marvellous and compelling story is a tribute to all those children overwhelmed by horror, injustice, and politics they cannot understand, and for which they are not responsible.”

Thomas Keanally, author of Schindler’s List

“In Ligocka’s fascinating book, the recognized artist, and set and costume designer, Roman Polański’s cousin, faces up to her memories, those of a young Polish Jew during World War II (..). A book that became a bestseller abroad, and should be purchased for both public and academic libraries.”

Library Review

“Ligocka’s book is not a simple journal of life in the Krakow ghetto and of hiding outside of the ghetto. It is an astonishing portrait of the girl that remains in the maturing Roma, the little girl who would not leave Roma when she was more grown up. The Girl in the Red Coat takes its place among those children of the Holocaust titles as Hanna Krall’s The Tenant and Michał Głowiński’s Black Seasons, telling us something truly new about the human experience.”

Małgorzata Baranowska, Gazeta Wyborcza

“A moving document. These childhood memories pack a real punch.”

Glamour, Favourite Books 2001