The color red symbolizes the Nazis’ unfeeling brutality and remorselessness. Red is associated in particular with the young Jewish girl Genia, who wears red from head to toe. For her, the color has no deeper meaning—like many three-year-olds, she just “passionately prefer[s]” one color. In this sense, it is initially associated with her innocence. Eventually, though, Schindler and Ingrid witness an Aktion where the SS round up Jewish people in the ghetto to send them to concentration camps, separating families and even openly executing people in the street. Among the crowd, they notice a little girl dressed in all red (who the reader knows is Genia). Though Genia’s love of red is a marker of her youthful innocence, it is, of course, also associated with blood and therefore with violence and death. So, the contrast between the little girl in red and the bloody horrors happening around her highlights the Nazis’ ruthlessness and cruelty—they don’t care whose innocence they corrupt or whose lives they take.
Notably, the Nazis don’t notice Genia at all, even though she immediately stands out to Schindler and Ingrid because of her bright red clothing. This deeply disturbs Schindler, who can hardly believe that such brutality is going on so close to someone as young and innocent as the girl in red. Watching this scene unfold is a turning point for him, as it makes him realize the true extent of the Nazis’ savagery and arrogance—they don’t care who witnesses events like this because they plan to kill the witnesses as well. The color red in this scene thus serves to highlight the unapologetic nature of the Nazi regime: just as the girl in red stands out to Schindler, the Nazis’ atrocities are hiding in plain sight and will soon be widely publicized. Yet just as the SS in this passage don’t notice or care about Genia, the Nazi Party more broadly doesn’t care who knows about their crimes, because they aspire to absolute power. And indeed, Schindler recognizes that although the girl in red is seemingly able to walk away from the Aktion unscathed, she will eventually be rounded up and killed like millions of other Holocaust victims.
The Color Red Quotes in Schindler’s List
His eyes slewed up Krakusa to the scarlet child. They were doing it within half a block of her; they hadn’t waited for her column to turn out of sight into Józefińska. Schindler could not have explained at first how that compounded the murders on the sidewalk. Yet somehow it proved, in a way no one could ignore, their serious intent. While the scarlet child stopped in her column and turned to watch, they shot the woman in the neck, and one of them, when the boy slid down the wall whimpering, jammed a boot down on his head as if to hold it still and put the barrel against the back of the neck—the recommended SS stance—and fired.
The Color Red Symbol Timeline in Schindler’s List
