About
Hana's Suitcase
In the true spirit of the "Global Village," a Japanese teacher
searches for a child lost in the Holocaust and discovers some of life's
lessons. Concerned that Japanese children would never learn about the Holocaust,
Fumiko Ishioka, the Director of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Center in
Japan, wanted tangible evidence of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish People.
She appealed to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Museum to loan her a few
artifacts. In March 2000, a battered old suitcase arrived in Japan from
Poland. It was a child's suitcase that bore these words: "Hana Brady,
Born May 16, 1931, Waisenkind (orphan)." Gathering around the suitcase,
the children wanted to know: Who was Hana Brady?
Fumiko realized that
Hana, the person, was infinitely more important than the artifact, and
began a quest to find the answers. In a suspenseful journey, searching
for clues across Europe and North America, she found the one surviving
relative - Hana's brother George. The mystery of the suitcase takes her
back through the years to find a loving Jewish family, whose happy life
in a small Czech town was destroyed forever by the invasion of the Nazis.
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