Hitler stole my pink rabbit – Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl (2019)

Directed by: Caroline Link | 112 minutes | family | Actors: Riva Krymalowski, Marinus Hohmann, Carla Juri, Oliver Masucci, Justus von Dohnányi, Ursula Werner, Rahel Hubacher, Peter Bantli, Hannah Kampichler, Meisser Noah, Held Alina, Risch Flurin Alexander, Knight Emma, ​​Anne Bennent, Luisa-Céline Gaffron Marie Goyette, Chammas Viktoria, Palumbo Julia Laura, André Szymanski, Anne Schäfer, Schomerus Luca Alene, Rafael Koussouris, Benjamin Sadler, Michele Cuciuffo, Raban Bieling

War; how do you explain that to children? Writer Judith Kerr (1923-2019) was the best. She drew on her own experiences for her Out of the Hitler Time trilogy. Young Judith was born in Berlin and was only nine years old when she fled Germany with her family. The rise of Hitler and his Nazi party made it impossible for her father Alfred, who openly criticized political developments, to stay in Germany and on election morning the Kerr family went down the ante. Their flight took Judith, her parents and brother Michael successively to Switzerland, France and finally England, where the family decided to stay after the war.

The idea of ​​using her own childhood as a source of inspiration was started in the early 1970s by her eight-year-old son Matthew (now a celebrated writer himself), who after watching ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) had a distorted view of the time when his mother grew up. To make that image more realistic, she wrote ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ in 1971, in which she showed the rise of Hitler through the eyes of a child (herself). A book in which the sentimentality and edelweiss from ‘The Sound of Music’ were hard to find. For those wondering how she came up with that title; afterwards she regretted that she had rushed to take a dog hug instead of her beloved pink bunny hug on the morning of their flight. Her youth novel was embraced for its sharp, intense observations. After all, a nine-year-old child experiences the war differently than an adult. Kerr later completed her trilogy with “Bombs on Aunt Dainty” and “A Small Person Far Away.”

‘Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl’, or in Dutch ‘Hitler stole my pink rabbit’, was filmed in 2019 by Caroline Link, who also adapted Kerr’s novel into a screenplay. She already proved in 2002 that the German filmmaker knows how to do this with ‘Nowhere in Africa’, based on the autobiographical novella by Stephanie Zweig. Thematically, both books follow the same line, namely that of a German-Jewish family that flees from the Nazis in the 1930s and tries to gain a foothold in another country. For ‘Nowhere in Africa’, Link received five German Film Awards and was awarded the Oscar for Best Non-English Language Film. With ‘Hitler stole my pink rabbit’ she stays close to Kerr’s original, although (unfortunately) she subtly brushes away the rougher and more whimsical edges that characterize the novel. Simplifying the hard, true personal memories, without taking the sting out of it, is an art that seems difficult to translate to the silver screen and that no one has mastered as well as Kerr himself.

Nine-year-old Anna (an excellent role by the young Riva Krymalowski) leads a wonderfully carefree life in the well-to-do circles in Berlin. But we understand that threat does indeed loom when we see her hiding from boys in Nazi uniforms during an innocent dress-up party. Fortunately, her older brother Max, dressed as Zorro, is there (Marinus Hohmann has an honest chemistry with his ‘sister’). The dressed-up boys are a harbinger of what awaits in Germany and what Anna and Max’s parents are very concerned about. Father Arthur (Oliver Masucci) is outspokenly critical of the NSDAP, Hitler’s party. Fearing that his passport will be confiscated, he flees across the border to Switzerland. His wife Dorothea (Carla Juri) and children soon follow. For Anna, it feels like an unexpected vacation. No one dares to tell her that she may never see her beloved home in Berlin again.

Imagine being taken from your house as a nine-year-old, without knowing whether you will ever return. Without knowing what lies ahead. Judith Kerr put into words exactly how confusing that must be for little Anna in her book. On the one hand, she sees the worry and fear in her parents’ eyes, but does she understand why they are so afraid? On the other hand, it is also exciting, as if she is experiencing an adventure, with mysterious encounters and new experiences. We don’t feel that tension and excitement in Links’s film. Of course, all sorts of things happen, especially when the trip takes the family to Paris and father suddenly has trouble finding work. Bumps in the road are smoothed out as much as possible, so that they can easily be stepped over and the film ripples along. We can imagine that this was done to make the film easier for children to digest (‘Hitler stole my pink rabbit’ rating is six years and older), but Kerr’s books are no slouch and that books are in great demand, also among young people worldwide (although the readers are of course a lot older than six years).

‘Hitler Stole My Pink Rabbit’ looks fantastic, with bright colors and lavish sets and decorations. Perhaps it all looks a bit too sunny – especially the part that takes place in photogenic Switzerland – and that also plays a part in the fact that the film is not gripping enough. Fortunately, the four protagonists are on a roll and it is thanks to them that the film comes alive, especially in the small everyday things like fumbling with a language you don’t speak well. But then Link flies out of the way again, for example when sketching advancing anti-Semitism, helped in the saddle by the too clearly present music that tries to play our emotions too emphatically. ‘Hitler stole my pink rabbit’ has pluses and minuses and is not nearly as compelling as Judith Kerr’s book of the same name, but thanks to the well-maintained decoration and the convincing actors, this book adaptation is quite worthwhile. A very safe choice to teach your children more about the Second World War.