Hana's Suitcase
The story of Hana Brady first became public when Fumiko Ishioka （石岡史子, Ishioka Fumiko）, 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 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. 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. |
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—Fumiko Ishioka |
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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 half million children. |
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—Fumiko Ishioka |
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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."
In February 2004, Lara Brady, Hana's niece, discovered inconsistencies between the suitcase on display and the suitcase pictured with Hana's friend after the war in the 1960s. Not only did the physical suitcase appear newer than in the photographs, but the location of the handle was also reversed. In March, Fumiko and George Brady inquired about the suitcase with the director of the Auschwitz museum, who explained that a replica had been created based on the pictures after the original suitcase was destroyed in a fire in 1984. This fire was likely caused by arson (according to the director and police at the time) while on loan to an English exhibit in Birmingham. As the museum personnel omitted this fact when they loaned it to the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center, the fact that the suitcase was a replica had gone unnoticed for several years. The family and the Center assert that even as such, the replica's contribution to the cause of human rights and peace education is not lessened by its lack of authenticity.
Read more about this topic: Hana Brady, Biography