Judith Kerr, who turned 95 in June 2018, is a very English lady. The first thing she does is offer my colleague, Laura, and myself tea, which we enjoy while sitting in armchairs in the author's London living room.

She is a petite old lady dressed in an elegant blue dress and adorned with a chain of pearls around her neck. The white curls on her head are carefully coiffed. Outside, a plane passes by overhead every five minutes as it makes its way towards Heathrow airport.

The writer Judith Kerr has spent over half a century in south London, much of it with the love of her life and husband, the BBC author Nigel Kneale, until his death in 2006.

The couple's son and daughter, now adults, grew up here in a typical English brick house with its well-tended front garden full of rhododendron bushes and flower beds — all just as cozy and unremarkable as the neighboring houses. You can't tell from the outside that a best-selling author lives here, one whose books have been translated into 20 different languages and sold over 10 million copies.



Judith Kerr presents her book 'Mister Cleghorn's Seal' to an audience in Berlin

A passion for writing and illustrating children's books

We spent over half a year trying to schedule an interview with Judith Kerr for our multimedia feature "After the Escape." It isn't so easy to meet up with her since she continues to actively pursue her passion for writing and illustrating children's books.

Despite being over 90 years old, Judith Kerr publishes one book after another. Around one year after the publication of "Mister Cleghorn's Seal," "Katinka's Tail" has just hit bookstores. Once again, one of her own cats is at the center of the book, just as in her successful series about Mog. Hardly surprising that during our visit a cat curled its way around our legs.

Many of Kerr's books feature cats. The feline character 'Mog' appears in numerous stories that have been translated into many languages, included German

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure A happy childhood Judith Kerr (r) and her older brother Michael grew up in Berlin. The children of well-known theater critic Alfred Kerr enjoyed a lot of freedom. Their mother, Julia, was a pianist who composed at home. On the way to school, Judith would often buy colored pencils that she used to draw stories of her adventures with friends. Math and reading didn't interest her.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Alfred Kerr on the radio Judith's father was an outspoken opponent of National Socialism. Starting in 1932, he had his own weekly show on German radio. When the Nazis started threatening him, Alfred and his wife hid that fact from the children. At Christmas that year, Judith and her brother were permitted to go to the cinema for the first time ever, but they did not realize that, beings Jews, they were in danger.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Hitler seizes power On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the NSDAP, was named Chancellor of Germany. Radical political changes got quickly underway. The Kerr family lived in a pretty suburb outside of Berlin-Grunewald, where the children remained mostly unaware of the changes. However, they sensed their parents' unease. Judith Kerr later titled her young adult novel "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit."

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure The last weeks in the German capital In February 1933, Alfred was bedridden with a bad flu. The Nazis had taken power, and Berlin was swarming with the party's security troops. As the first wave of arrests began, union members and regime opponents were persecuted. Alfred Kerr luckily received a tip-off that his passport was going to be confiscated. In the night of February 15, at the last moment, he fled over the border to Prague.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Adventurous escape to Switzerland Judith and her brother kept silent about their father's escape. Their mother secretly started to pack suitcases, including Judith's childhood drawings (above). On March 5, 1933, the day before the federal election in which the Nazis would win the most votes, the family boarded a train for Switzerland. There, they met Alfred. For the Kerr children, the journey into exile seemed like an adventure.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Book-burning, 1933 As a Jewish author, the Nazis had long set their sights on Alfred Kerr. On May 10, 1933, a public book-burning event took place in front of Berlin's Humboldt University. It was organized by the German Student Union. Jeering masses threw works by Alfred Kerr into the flames, as well as books by other writers such as Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Exile stopovers: Lugano, Zurich, Paris Judith was nine years old when her sheltered childhood came to an end and her family had to escape. The family's resources were depleted, and they had to leave everything behind that was dear to them. "The piano was gone, the drapes, the toys, even the stuffed pink rabbit," Kerr later wrote. In Paris, the Kerr family finally found a furnished apartment.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Impoverished emigre life As with all Jewish families, the Nazis expropriated the Kerrs' possessions, leaving the family impoverished in exile. But Judith (r, with brother and mother) still enjoyed being a refugee. "Paris was wonderful," she later wrote. However, her father could hardly feed the family from his writing. Tight on money, the Kerrs left Paris and headed to London, landing at a shabby emigrant hotel in 1936.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Tough wartime in London The Second World War broke out on September 1, 1939. After Nazi air attacks on London, Britain suddenly classified Judith and her parents as "friendly enemy aliens." The Jewish emigre family experienced strong solidarity from the British population. "People were so good to us, so brave. After all, we were German," Judith Kerr recalled. She developed patriotic feelings for her new home.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure A new home in Britain Thanks to a scholarship, Judith began studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1946. Occasional work as a drawing teacher and an editor at the BBC enabled her to become independent of her parents. Her mother also worked occasionally as an interpreter for the Americans, including at the Nuremberg trials. In 1947, Judith Kerr (r) received her passport as a proud new British citizen.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure Success with children's books Judith Kerr wrote children's books. "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" was published in 1968, "Mog the Forgetful Cat" followed in 1970. Both books were wildly successful. Her husband, whom she met at the BBC, helped her with the text. She drew all her illustrations by hand, using only colored pencils and an eraser. Even at age 80 (above), she continued to draw and create stories for children.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure A young adult novel with millions of copies Children around the world read and love Judith Kerr's books with their uplifting and refreshing stories. Her most famous book is "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit," a classic of emigre literature for kids and adults alike. The book is part of a trilogy of novels that tells her own family's refugee tale. In 1974, the "German Youth Book Prize" honored her for the work.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure At home in her world of books Germany was Judith Kerr's favorite place to do author readings. She regularly visited her old hometown of Berlin to present her books, such as in 2016 (above) with her story "Mr Cleghorn's Seal." Despite being over 90 years old, her energy enchanted the literature festival's audience, which included many refugee children.

Artists After the Escape: Judith Kerr — flight as an adventure The Elixir of Life Judith Kerr lived in her adopted country for over 80 years. "I have become very happy in England," she said cheerfully in German. She never lost her childhood Berlin accent. In a TV interview for the DW documentary "After the Escape," Kerr told her tale of flight and life as an emigrant in London — memories that she also left to posterity in her books. She died on May 22, 2019, at the age of 95. Author: Heike Mund (cmb)



The worldwide best-seller 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit'

However, the book that brought Judith Kerr worldwide fame, "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit," does not feature a cat. It tells the story of a young girl who flees Nazi Germany with her family in 1933 — the author's own story.

I asked her how much truth is contained in the novel. "Everything important was exactly as such; I wrote it as honestly as I could," Judith Kerr answered. "When you write in the first person, everything has to be exactly as it was — otherwise, you're cheating."

Alfred Kerr holds his daughter Judith in his arms. The photo was taken between 1931 and 1934

The sudden end of a happy childhood in Berlin

Judith Kerr was born in Berlin in 1923. Her father Alfred Kerr was the most central theater critic of the Weimar era, and her mother Julia Kerr, née Weismann, was a composer.

Alfred Kerr adamantly opposed Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist party continued to attract more supporters in the early 1930s. Alfred was also Jewish.

When Hitler became Imperial Chancellor in 1933, Alfred Kerr fled to Prague. In March, Judith, her two-year-older brother Michael and her mother also secretly left their beautiful house in the idyllic wooded suburb of Berlin-Grunewald — just before the secret police tried to seize their passports. They met up with their father in Switzerland.

Swiss German and another move

There, Judith learned her first "foreign language": Swiss German, with all its notoriously difficult and unique pronunciations. "The other children at school always tested me to see if I knew the language. The test word was "Chuchichäschtli" — kitchen cabinet."

But Switzerland was only a brief stopping point. Just as the children had become used to their new surroundings, they had to move again, this time traveling through the south of France to Paris, where by 1934 many German refugees were living.

There, Alfred Kerr hoped to get writing assignments that had eluded him in Switzerland.

Judith did not know a single word of French, but she grit her teeth and learned the language so quickly that after just one year, she received top marks in her end-of-the-year school tests.

'Isn't it wonderful to be a refugee!'

One time, Judith Kerr recalled, she was standing with her father on the balcony of their small rooftop apartment — the upper ones were cheaper — and looking over the rooftops of Paris. "And then I must have said to my father, 'Isn't it wonderful to be a refugee!'" Kerr said, smiling. "That must have upset him since it was all unbelievably difficult for my parents. But they made do in such a way that we barely noticed it."

It was only decades later, while sorting through her parent's correspondence, that she learned her mother had contemplated suicide and had wanted to take the children with her to the grave.

Judith Kerr was a teenager when WWII began in 1939, the same year this photo of her was taken

"I saw the date on the letter and thought, that was written right at the time when I was learning French. It would have been really annoying if I had died, just when I was able to speak French." It's refined, but very dark British humor.

The year 1935 brought yet another move, but Kerr's parents managed to offer Judith and her brother a secure home. This time they went to London, again with the hope of assignments for Alfred Kerr.

Meanwhile, the family savings were more or less depleted. Judith's mother kept the family afloat with odd jobs while her father sat in his room writing texts that he could rarely sell.

By that time, Judith was well versed in learning new languages, and the family was soon speaking English with one another.

'Enemy alien' or English?

The Second World War then started in 1939. Judith Kerr was 17 years old when the German Air Force bombed London. She worked for the Red Cross, organizing the distribution of clothes for British soldiers.

Then, one day, she got a phone call from Cambridge, where her brother Michael was studying law. He had been arrested for being an "enemy alien" and was interned. It made no difference that he had to flee the Nazis because he was a Jew and was waiting for confirmation in becoming a British citizen.

Through connections, Michael managed to free himself from the internment camp on the Isle of Man. He immediately signed up to be a pilot with the British Royal Air Force and fought against the Germans.

"At the end of the war, it was quite clear to me that this was my home," Judith Kerr said. "That naturally was not the case for our parents. They belonged nowhere."

'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit': School reading in Germany

In her autobiographical trilogy of novels for young adults ("Pink Rabbit" is one of them), Judith Kerr impressively showed how escape and new beginnings affect a family. But she only really began to write after the death of her parents. Alfred Kerr died in 1948, her mother in 1965.

By this time, Judith Kerr's son and daughter were around the same age as she and her brother were when they were forced to leave Germany in 1933. "And then I thought, I would really like to write a book for my children, to show them what it was like then." "Pink Rabbit" was published in 1971 and became a worldwide success. In Germany, it became a part of school curricula, and a film version of the story by German Oscar winner Caroline Link has been announced.

A look ahead

The one hour granted to us by her agent for the interview ultimately turned into nearly two and a half. Judith Kerr is a fantastic storyteller. I was mesmerized listening to her. She, too, seemed to enjoy telling us about her life.

Judith Kerr is at home in her garden in south London, where she has lived for over 80 years

As things wrapped up, we filmed her in her garden. Slightly hunched, but taking confident steps, she strode across the lawn, nimbly stepping over the camera and sound cables that we had installed. Outside, the planes overhead were even louder. The cat hid itself in the bushes. And we forgot to take a photo with her as a souvenir. By the time the idea occurred to me, we had already stowed the camera equipment into our crew car and waved goodbye to Judith Kerr one last time.

That, however, was truly not the end of the world. The encounter with Judith Kerr will remain in my memory forever, even without the photo.

Discover more about Judith Kerr and other artists who had to find home in a foreign land in DW's online feature "After the Escape."

You can find the documentary on Youtube.

Or watch it directly below: