When Caroline Link reread “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,” decades after she first read it for school, she underlined a passage where Swiss boys throw gravel at the young Jewish protagonist. She couldn’t wait to direct that scene.
It’s a curious, if not quite startling moment in the chapter book, a 1971 semi-autobiographical novel of Judith Kerr’s life in exile from Germany, which began when she was nearly 10, just days before the Nazis won the 1933 election. While living in an inn in the mountains, Anna (Kerr’s alter ego) is followed home by male classmates who shout her name and pelt her with shoes and dirt.