Hitler, The Tiger and Me

November 26, 2013

Judith Kerr, now in her 90s, is the creator of some of our best-loved children’s books, including Mog and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. She also has a gripping personal story – born into a Jewish family in Berlin, she was forced to flee Germany at the age of nine because her father, a well-known writer, was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. Her children’s novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit tells that story. It is now a set text in German schools.

We film children studying it at the very school she went to in Berlin, and see her at the local station, where she used to catch the train down town – it became the place of deportation for Berlin’s Jews. She looks at the memorial there with BBC Imagine presenter Alan Yentob – ‘It’s all very well’ she says, ‘but nobody did anythng’. She is a radiantly positive person – ‘we owe it to those who died – what wouldn’t they give to have just one day that we have?’

Contributors include Lauren Child, Michael Morpurgo and Michael Rosen.

‘A balance of shrewdness and innocence which takes it away from the realm of the dark or the twee … This is a beautifully straightforward documentary on a hugely likeable figure.’Claire Winter,
Time Out

‘What a pleasure it was to look at the world through Kerr’s eyes for a little while …’Ellen E. Jones,
The Independent

‘delightful edition of the arts strand’
Daily Mail

‘deeply humane’
The Times

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Executive Producer Anne Elletson for Storyvault Films