Oliwia Dabrowska
She played the girl in the red coat: actress from “Schindler’s List” helps Ukrainian refugees
Oliwia Dabrowska in the film “Schindler’s List”
© Allstar / Imago Images
The girl in the red coat from “Schindler’s List” was burned into the memory of many viewers. Actress Oliwia Dabrowska was three years old at the time, but the role has shaped her life to this day.
At the scene many viewers should still remember: A girl in a red coat wanders through the Kraków ghetto, SS men around her shoot Jews or cradle them on trains. The red coat is the only splash of color in Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood film “Schindler’s List” about Oskar Schindler, the industrialist who employed more than a thousand Jews as forced laborers and thus saved their lives.
Back then, Oliwia Dabrowska played the girl in the red coat. Although she was only three years old at the time, the role has shaped her life to this day. The now 32-year-old Pole posted a picture on Instagram after the start of the war in Ukraine, in which the girl was colored in the national colors of Ukraine: “She was once a symbol of hope. Let’s let her be that again.” And Dabrowska is also very practical: on the Polish-Ukrainian border, she supports refugees who have come from the war zone.
“Schindler’s List”: The actress sees her role as a symbol
“I chose to take action and help people instead of being afraid,” she told the Washington Post. Together with her mother, she got in the car and drove the 130 kilometers from Kraków to the border. There she takes care of the refugees and helps to bring many of them to different Polish cities where they can stay for the time being. Sometimes she is afraid, she writes on Instagram, but that motivates her all the more to help people.
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As an adult, Dabrowska no longer pursued her acting career. But today she uses her role in the Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List” to draw attention to the suffering of the people in Ukraine. “I thought that through this symbol I could speak to more people, involve more people,” she said. “People don’t know me myself, but they know that I played the little girl in the red coat.”
On Instagram she calls for donations, reports on the current situation and the willingness to help of many people in Poland, but also in other countries. Through her new job, she has met many tragic and terrible fates, says Dabrowska: “I think I will never forget her in my life.”
Sources: Oliwia Dabrowska on Instagram / “Washington Post”
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