So I learned all that later, not when I was a kid, no.ĪKT: The book has a wonderful way into children’s minds, through that toy. And I think some also responded to When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit in England, but not as much.
So the English people, funny enough, know Judith Kerr very well, but for another reason, another book. One is an Eisbär, so he’s still around.” Photo: Ed BahlmanĬJ: Judith, exactly, Judith Kerr, she was really famous in England, but not for that book, but for the other one, The Tiger Comes for Tea. So I had quite a separation there in a way.ĪKT: And I remember seeing you in Finsterworld, where you have quite another adventure!Īnne-Katrin Titze's Steiff Eisbär, a stand-in for Carla Juri’s special toy: “I still have one. In the other one, the war and the drama of war was the main focus. That we are scared and escape is an adventure. Because one, Pink Rabbit, was very much about protecting the children and not to make them feel the war. What did this do to your relationship to history, this part of history?ĬJ: To be honest, they were quite separate in my head. So they overlapped.ĪKT: In one, you are a Nazi, teaching girls in Wales, right before the war in the summer of 1939, and in the other one it is 1933 and you are fleeing Germany to Switzerland and then Paris with your Jewish family. I had to fly to Berlin and go back to Wales to shoot. I shot Six Minutes before, but the same year. Uncle Julius (Justus von Dohnányi) with Arthur (Oliver Masucci)ĪKT: What’s the chronology of shooting? Which did you film first? Were they one after the other?ĬJ: Yeah, they were, actually. In 2021 it is a good reminder to treat the spaces around you with respect and to not take our beautiful world for granted.įrom Iceland, Carla Juri joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.Īnne-Katrin Titze: Hi Carla, you’re wearing a Brooklyn sweatshirt! But you’re not in Brooklyn, are you? In Caroline Link’s film, we see Anna say goodbye to the rooms of the Grunewald villa she grew up in, the rocks and well of a small Swiss mountain village, and the Eiffel Tower. How caring are you? How much can you be trusted taking care of someone else, even an inanimate object, let alone a pet? The vast discrepancy between the kind of guilt sparked by abandoning a toy, and the atrocities committed by the Nazis between 19, is what opens up, and where the genius lies in Judith Kerr’s book.Ī perennial for introducing children to the Holocaust, the story works with the animistic worldview, the best of us never totally abandoned as adults. It is a relationship that prepares you for future loves and the world ahead. Anyone who ever had a special bond with a stuffed animal will understand.
Dorothea, once a celebrated pianist in Berlin, with her life turned upside down, is now mainly concerned with making sure that her children have enough to eat and a roof over their head.Ĭarla Juri on Anna (Riva Krymalowski) making a tough decision: “Pink Rabbit, was very much about protecting the children and not to make them feel the war.” It is as much about the parents comforting the children as it is about the kids signalling that they understand and are on board. The older brother Max (Hohmann), who calls his sister “little man” to her perpetual chagrin, plays along, together with Anna. The daughter Anna (Krymalowski), whose perspective is guiding us through the story, is a stand-in for Judith Kerr and how she experienced the numerous uprootings and what her parents did their best of disguising as an adventure. The father Arthur (Masucci), a famous theatre critic, modelled after the author’s father Alfred Kerr, is on Hitler’s hit list, and he and his wife Dorothea (Juri) and two children become refugees, first in Switzerland, then Paris, then London. Pink Rabbit is the story of a well-off Jewish family, the Kempers (Alfred Kerr’s actual family name was Kempner), living in Germany in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power. Housekeeper Heimpi (Werner) is the lost, doting presence children will remember all life long, the nosy concierge in Paris (Bennent) teaches them about the vileness of neighbourhood gossip, and uncle Julius (von Dohnányi) sends missives from their home country as it loses its soul.
The father Arthur Kemper (Oliver Masucci) reunited with his son Max (Marinus Hohmann), wife Dorothea (Carla Juri), and daughter Anna (Riva Krymalowski)Ĭarla Juri, Riva Krymalowski, Oliver Masucci (a Joseph Beuys look-alike in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away), and Marinus Hohmann star as the Kemper family, with a terrific ensemble cast, including Ursula Werner, Anne Bennent ( Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love and unforgettable in Hans W Geissendörfer’s The Wild Duck), and Justus von Dohnányi ( Christian Petzold’s Transit).
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