Abstract

This essay examines the differing experiences of girls growing up in exile from Nazi Germany in two fictional works, Out of the Hitler Time: One Family’s Story and Escape from Berlin, based on the real life experiences of children’s authors, Judith Kerr and Irene N. Watts. Blending the biographical, the historical and the literary, what emerges is a study of how these young refugees negotiate new linguistic and cultural spaces and cope with everyday life in unfamiliar environments. The often unstable nature of life in exile will be explored against the backdrop of the loss of language, home and citizenship.