When Caroline Link first read the children’s book “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” as a young girl, she was immediately drawn to the story. The semi-autographical novel by Judith Kerr tells the story of a Jewish family’s escape from 1933 Berlin to Switzerland, France, and England. Told from the perspective of the author’s alter ego, nine-year-old Anna Kemper, the story tackled prejudice, exile, displacement, and adaptation without going into graphic detail about the horrors of the Holocaust and what was clearly going on at the time.
Link has now made “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” into a film, adding plot lines and moments to the screenplay to bring the story to life on the screen with a bold, new perspective that remains true to the author’s vision. Kerr worked very closely with Link during production before she passed away in 2019 at age 95.
“Beyond Silence,” Link’s first feature, was nominated for an Oscar. With “Nowhere in Africa,” Link became the second woman director to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (now known as Best International Feature Film). Her other features include “Annaluise & Anton,” “A Year Ago in Winter,” and “Exit Marrakech.”
We talked to Link about “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,” standing up to fascism as a German film director, and her relationship with Kerr.
“When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” opens in theaters nationwide May 21.
This interview has been edited.
W&H: What was your motivation for making “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”?
CL: Judith Kerr wrote this book in 1971, and it came to Germany a few years later and I first read it when I was 10 or 11 years old. Her book handled a challenging and dark period of German history. She also managed to show what happened [to Jewish people] in a very optimistic, positive, light way. The novel was sad and moving and, at the same time, light. I thought this was very unusual for stories that take place during that time, so why not make a movie that works the same way?
Of course, some people told me that I had to dramatize the story a little bit because not a lot happens in the plot. The family doesn’t experience any harm or immediate danger. Let’s make something up, I thought, because if the book worked, let’s try to make the movie in the same way. The screenplay has depth and is profound, and is told in the Judith Kerr style.
W&H: Anti-semitism is quite subtle in the film. Let’s talk about the opening scene, without giving anything away to the readers who have not seen the movie yet. Was this scene meant to foreshadow the events following the family’s move from Berlin as Hitler rose to power?
CL: Yes, I created the opening scene to foreshadow what was going to soon happen to the family. In the scene, Anna is playing with her rabbit, and boys in brown uniforms are following her. The chase at the carnival party will soon be a reality for the family as they will shortly depart Berlin out of fear for their lives. At the party, Anna gets into a fight, and her brother comes to help. This happens because family in the story is necessary and their support is critical.
Also, the book starts how we have seen it many times in German television and German movies, with Hitler posters, Nazis on the street, and brown uniforms. I wanted to make a movie without a single brown uniform. In Germany, we are overflowing with Nazi films. Some of them are good and strong, and some are not very good.
I wanted to use the simple language of Judith Kerr’s writing. During the making of this film, she said something to me that was very surprising, and I would never have dared to put it into those words as a German. Judith told me that those four years until her family finally came to London were the most beautiful of her life. For me, this was a story about the persecution of a Jewish family fleeing from their home. Maybe she remembered it more as an optimistic time as she got older. Yet she told me at age 95 that she loved that time in her life because “we as a family were so close like never before… and never after.”
W&H: Some of the characters in the film did not seem even to know what was going on with their Jewish neighbors, like their next-door neighbor in Berlin. How neatly woven into the story were these details?
CL: That character was supposed to be dangerous. I wanted her to be one of those people who would call the police [on her Jewish neighbors]. She was not supposed to know the Kempers were leaving. That’s why Dorothea Kemper, the mother, gets nervous, and she tells her nanny, Heimpi, “See you in a few minutes.” She pretends they are going to drop off their children with friends. The neighbor can’t know the Kempers are leaving the country because they are Jewish and are about to be hunted by the Nazis.
W&H: How did Judith Kerr feel about the changes you made going from book to film?
CL: I had a long discussion with Judith Kerr about the screenplay. She was very critical about the changes I wanted to make. She said that this novel had worked for so many decades, for generations of people, the way it was.
Some of the changes I made were just because some scenes in the book were too expensive to make. For example, we could not create the scene when the family celebrated the French national holiday in Paris at Champs-Élysées alongside hundreds of people.
W&H: What are your essential elements of making a good film?
CL: To make a good movie, it’s not so much about the construction of the plot for me. Students in film school learn the dramaturgic schemes, and on which page everything must change. I think in terms of seconds and moments. That’s what I love about movies.
I told Judith that I wanted to bring her book’s smaller moments to the screen. I wanted to create what I thought was so remarkable about her book — the details, the quotations, what Anna says in certain moments, what the father says to Anna, her mother, and her brother. I focused much more on these little things, which creates an atmosphere. The movie is about atmosphere more than the plot because nothing happens to the family. You never see the danger they are in. It’s always atmospheric, and the little things are the ones that you walk away remembering. Judith Kerr listened to me and then said, “Yes, okay, maybe that’s nice.” She felt flattered.
W&H: How did your film capture Judith Kerr’s details?
CL: I think Judith’s details were beautiful, like when Anna said, “Maybe my childhood has to be difficult because the people who have difficult childhoods become famous.” Or when she is chased through a Swiss village, and boys are throwing stones at her and she explains that their rock-throwing was an expression of love. Judith either invented that or remembered it. She was 50 when she wrote the book, but she remembered so many details. The essence of her voice is vital, and the emotions of Anna as the protagonist are essential. I never stick to the page when writing a movie. I find film scenes that intensify a character’s feelings, which is how I described them the way Judith Kerr did in her novel.
W&H: It’s incredible that Judith Kerr wrote the film at age 50 and remembered such detail.
CL: When Judith Kerr wrote “When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit,” she also made some things up. She knew that not every detail in her novel would be authentic or genuine.
One thing I invented for the screen was the calendar that Anna uses after the family leaves Berlin because she begins to count down the days they can return home. I thought a lot about what made the story so deep, even though everything was stated in an optimistic, healthy, and positive way. At the beginning of the story, the children thought they would go back home in a few days or weeks or maybe a year. More and more, they realized they were never going back home.
It is so incredibly sad to watch people lose their language, their home, the people they love, their Heimpi, their toys, their neighborhood, and their school forever. It moved me so much that one can be forced to build a new home somewhere else and start life over. So, I invented the calendar that Anna, who is only nine, makes at the beginning of the trip as they leave Berlin in order to cross off the days until she goes home. At the end of the movie, she throws the calendar away and says that she is glad that she doesn’t have to cross days off anymore. I wanted to invent physical things that underlined what she described in the book.
W&H: The topic of refugees is a big issue all over the world right now. Do you feel it is a right and obligation as a German director to stand up to fascism, exclusion, and hatred in this day and age?
CL: The situation in Germany is very complicated. After the reunification, there was always a complex issue between the East Germans and West Germans. East Germans tend to think they are deprived of so many things, so they want to speak out and be taken seriously. They don’t want to be beggars from the east. So, in this unhealthy psychological being of the German people, there is a particular danger where extreme political positions are growing in the East.
Then we have the situation that many refugees are coming, mostly from Muslim countries. We also have a growing Jewish population in Berlin and other cities. All of this together is explosive. When I talk to Jewish friends, they tell me they are afraid to walk through some regions of Berlin wearing a kippah due to growing anti-semitism.
You don’t always know how to explain all the growing hatred in the world to children.
W&H: You worked with several women making this film, from screenwriter Anna Brüggemann to cinematographer Bella Halben. What was the collaboration with them and other women on the set like?
CL: I have never had the problem that I didn’t have enough women on my team. Most of them are dear friends; they are also my creative partners. For me, it is not worth mentioning anymore that I think they can do it. They are strong, leading women running cameras, costumes, make-up, the art department, everything.
W&H: What’s the climate like in Germany right now for female directors?
CL: I honestly have never experienced much male oppression. I can defend myself. I was never too shy to say, “Wait a minute, I can do it.” I encourage filmmakers who are in film school to step up when they have the chance to do things.
W&H: Can you please talk about your selection of the two main female actresses: Riva Krymalowski, who plays Anna Kemper, and Carla Juri, who plays Dorothea Kemper?
CL: Carla is lovely and very experienced. She is from Switzerland and has a beautiful glow. Sometimes we were both not too happy that her part wasn’t described more profoundly. In real life, Judith Kerr’s mother was a complicated person. She suffered a lot in exile; she couldn’t work anymore. However, there wasn’t space in the children’s book to describe Judith’s parents in a complex way. So, I added some things that I read about the parents in Alfred Kerr’s biography. Anna’s father was a very famous German theater critic. I read about his feelings about his situation while in exile and more about his wife.
I would have loved to add more about them to the plot, but this is a young children’s film. In real life, Judith’s mother was depressed for an extended period, and I didn’t want to bring that sadness into the film. That would have gone too far away from what Judith wanted.
Riva, who played the lead role of Anna, is a beautiful young actress. I always look for children who have never acted before. I love it when children have never seen themself on the screen. Riva was just a nine-year-old girl who did what she needed to do.
W&H: What has it been like waiting out the pandemic to bring “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” to the world?
CL: We started showing the movie a year ago on Christmas. In Germany, our film was in movie theaters before the pandemic. When the pandemic closed down the German movie theaters, it had already been out for three months. Unfortunately, many school classes were coming to see it, and the business of showing it was over, so that ended.
W&H: What are you working on next?
CL: I start shooting something I wrote for television about two children’s psychologists in August. It’s about four children and the therapists that work with them and is not a documentary. I always focus on children. Children are my subject matter.
