HANA’S SUITCASE
By Karen Levine
Evans Brothers, £4.99, 128pp
ISBN 0 237 52630 1
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VISITORS TO any of the world’s Holocaust museums know that it is the mundane objects that tear at the heart. Setting up the first such museum in Japan, the curator Fumiko Ishioka sought material from her counterparts in Auschwitz, who responded by sending her a child’s jumper, sock and shoe, a can of Zyklon B poison gas and a suitcase.
It was the suitcase that particularly intrigued both Fumiko and the groups of children that visited the museum. Though empty, it had a name and date of birth painted on the front: Hana Brady, 16 May 1931. Fumiko and her young assistants determined to find out all that they could about Hana.
Their quest and discovery form the subject of Karen Levine’s short book. Hana lived in the small Moravian town of Nove Mesto, where her parents owned the main store. After the Nazi invasion, she suffered the infringement first of her liberty and then of her identity (forbidden to go to cinemas, ice-rinks, school and forced to wear a yellow star). In 1941 her mother was sent to Ravensbruck and her father to a Gestapo prison. The following year, she and her older brother, George, were taken to the Thereisenstadt concentration camp. Finally, in 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz where, as she was too young to work, she was gassed.
Through a combination of persistence and serendipity, Fumiko managed to colour in Hana’s story (literally when she obtained copies of her Thereisenstadt paintings). Levine’s account pays tribute both to Fumiko’s resolve and, especially, to Hana’s fortitude. For older readers who are all too familiar with Nazi depravity, the book stands as a particularly poignant reminder; for younger readers, at whom it is primarily aimed, it offers a vital lesson in the need for tolerance and respect.