Hana Brady (
Hana "Hanička" Bradyová, Germanized in the writing on her suitcase as "Hanna Brady") (16 May 1931 in
Nové Město na Moravě – 23 October 1944 in
Oświęcim,
Poland) was a Jewish girl and
Holocaust victim. She is the subject of the 2002 non-fiction children's book
Hana's Suitcase, written by Karen Levine.
Along with her older brother
George, Hana was imprisoned by the German Nazis as a
Jew, and sent to the
Theresienstadt (Terezin) prison camp. In 1944, she was transferred to the
Auschwitz concentration camp. While her brother survived imprisonment by working as a
labourer , Hana was killed in the gas chambers a few hours after she had arrived on 23 October 1944.
Hana's Suitcase
The story of Hana Brady first became public when Fumiko Ishioka, a Japanese educator and director of the Japanese non-profit Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center exhibited Hana's suitcase in 2000 as a relic of the concentration camp.Visiting Auschwitz in 1999, Ishioka requested a loan of children's items, things that would convey the story of the Holocaust to other children.
I went to Auschwitz in 1999 and asked for a loan of some children's items. I specifically asked [for] a shoe, this little shoe, and I asked for a suitcase. A suitcase - that really tells you a story of how children, who used to live happily with their family, were transported and were allowed to take only one suitcase. [The suitcase] shows this journey. I thought an object like a suitcase would be a very important item to let children in Japan learn what happened to children in the Holocaust.
—Fumiko Ishioka
The suitcase turned out to be a very capable means of telling the story of the Holocaust, reaching out to children at their level.
In Japan, the Holocaust is so far away. Some people don't see any connection whatsoever. But when they look at the suitcase, these children were really shocked. 'She was my age.' That really helped them a lot, to focus on this one little life that was lost. They could really relate her to themselves and try to think of why such a thing could happen to a girl like her. Why the Jewish people? And why children? They then realized there were one and a 6 million children like hanna.
—Fumiko Ishioka
The suitcase has large writing on it, a name and birthdate and the German word,
Waisenkind (orphan).
Ishioka began painstakingly researching Hana's life and eventually found her surviving brother in
Canada.
The story of Hana Brady and how her suitcase led Ishioka to Toronto became the subject of a
CBC documentary. The producer of that documentary,
Karen Levine was urged to turn the story into a book by a friend who was a publisher and whose parents were Holocaust survivors. Said Levine, "I first read about Hana’s suitcase in December 2000. I read about Hana’s suitcase in The Canadian Jewish News. My heart started to beat. I fell in love with the story instantly. This was a different kind of Holocaust story. It had at its centre a terrible sadness, one we all know too well. But it had a modern layer to it that lifted it up, that had connection, and even redemption."
The 2002 book became a bestseller and received the
Bank Street College of Education Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for
non-fiction, the National Jewish Book Award, and several other Canadian awards for children's literature.
The book received a nomination for the
Governor General's Award and was selected as a final award candidate for the Norma Fleck award. It has been translated into over 20 languages and published around the world.
The book was written with the support of George Brady and Fumiko Ishioka.
A play has been written, based on the book. In an interview with George Brady, he mentions there may be a film coming out, as well.
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