She literally dreams that coins are falling down threatening to crush him.Ī perfect class novel to deal with human migration, change, language difficulties, history and family life in general. Anna has a nightmare when she hears that the Nazis have put a prize on her father's head. Hitler's presence in their lives is personal and direct, they can't understand the actual happenings. When Anna and her brother hear that the Nazis have taken all their belongings in Germany, they imagine Hitler playing with their board game collection and the stuffed pink rabbit Anna had to leave behind. In a globalised world, that is a necessary attitude!Īnother charm of the book is the child's perspective of historical events. When the family moves on to England, she has new confidence in her ability to adapt, and she starts out with the knowledge that she might not be able to understand a word right now, but if she gives it a couple of months, she will talk without any difficulty. My favourite part is when she almost gives up learning to speak French and then suddenly realises she can do it. They move first to Switzerland, then Paris, and finally to England.Īnna reflects on how she and her brother adjust to the different environments they encounter, how they struggle with different school systems and languages. (Me included!)Īnna tells the story the odyssey her family is forced to undertake in 1933, when Hitler grasps power in Germany and her family has to leave Berlin in a hurry - being Jewish and politically active against the Nazis. When I started reading the book I expected another sorrowful account of the worst time in history, but in the end I closed the book with a smile on my face and the thought that everybody should read this book to be encouraged to deal with change in a new way. Then she herself and her brother Max were being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany… One day, her father was unaccountably missing. She was nine years old when it began, too busy with her schoolwork and toboganning to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe – starting with her own small life.Īnna suddenly found things moving too fast for her to understand. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer.

Partly autobiographical, this is first of the internationally acclaimed trilogy by Judith Kerr telling the unforgettable story of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany at the start of the Second World War

When hitler stole pink rabbit