When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1971

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Background

Historical Context: Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, held power in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Led by the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler, the party instituted a policy of racial cleansing based on discriminatory and illegitimate racial science that promoted the Aryan race as superior. The Nazi Party’s genocidal policies aimed to restore the fatherland of Germany to its alleged former glory.

Anti-Jewish legislation and boycotts increased between 1933 and 1935, culminating in the Nuremberg Laws, which mandated the separation of Aryans from Non-Aryans (which included Jews and other groups designated as racially inferior). These aims mandated complete legal and social separation of German Jews from other Germans. On November 9th, 1938, on a night now infamously known as Kristallnacht, Jewish business, homes, and Synagogues were violently destroyed or burned (“Antisemitism in History: Nazi Anti Semitism.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2023).

As part of the alleged restoration of the German fatherland, Hitler also invaded surrounding countries, first Austria and then Poland, prompting an Allied Forces response that signaled the beginning of World War II. Jews from many countries across Europe, including Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Romania, Norway, Latvia, Italy, Hungary, Greece, Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria, Belgium, Austria, and Albania were systematically murdered in an attempted genocide that took the lives of over six million men, women, and children in an event now known as the Holocaust (“Jewish Losses During the Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2023).

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is set against the backdrop of the early years of Nazi power, with Anna and her family forced to flee to escape persecution. While the family manages to find safety abroad, their financial and emotional struggles illustrate the difficulties of displacement and the high pressures experienced by Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Authorial Context: Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr describes her novel, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, as semi-autobiographical. As in the novel, Kerr’s family fled Germany shortly before the 1933 election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, after Kerr’s father, Alfred Kerr, received a tip-off that the Nazis planned on coming to their home to take their passports, or even arrest them, if Hitler was voted into power.

The family fled to Switzerland, where they lived in Zurich for a time, but the newspapers, careful to reflect Switzerland’s neutral political stance, were reluctant to print Alfred Kerr’s work. The family moved to Paris, where they lived for almost two years, and then moved to London. Judith Kerr became a naturalized British citizen in 1947. She lived in England for the remainder of her life.

As an adult, Kerr married Nigel “Tom” Kneale. The couple had two children, Tacy and Matthew. Kerr, who studied at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and worked as an artist for a time, began to write and illustrate children’s books when her children were young. She says that her published words were based on stories that she told her children. Later, she wrote the Out of Hitler Time trilogy, of which When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is the first installment. Kerr, who passed away in London in 2019, is celebrated for her widely popular books, especially her children’s picture books (which she wrote and illustrated), The Tiger who Came to Tea, and the Mog series.