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    Hana's Suitcase: A True Story
    Hana's Suitcase: A True Story
    Hana's Suitcase: A True Story
    Audiobook2 hours

    Hana's Suitcase: A True Story

    Written by Karen Levine

    Narrated by Stephanie Wolfe

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In March 2000, a suitcase arrived at a children’s Holocaust education center in Tokyo, Japan. On the outside, in white paint, were these words: Hana Brady, May 16, 1931, and Waisenkind – the German word for orphan.

    Children who saw the suitcase on display were full of questions. Who was Hana Brady? What happened to her? They wanted Fumiko Ishioka, the center’s curator, to find the answers.

    In a suspenseful journey, Fumiko searches for clues across Europe and North America. The mystery of the suitcase takes her back through seventy years, to a young Hana and her family, whose happy life in a small Czech town was turned upside down by the invasion of the Nazis.

    “Like the very best of museum exhibits, Hana’s Suitcase shows how facts and objects can be put together to honour its subject in a very personal and loving way. Highly recommended.” – The Toronto Star

    “Skillfully, and with great sensitivity, Levine weaves together the two stories, alternating that of a young life shattered in increments and that of Fumiko Ishioka’s relentless search for answers.” – The Globe and Mail

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 20, 2009
    ISBN9781423382348
    Hana's Suitcase: A True Story
    Author

    Karen Levine

    Karen Levine has won many awards for her work in radio, including two presigious Peabody Awards (Canada) - one for the documentary Children of the Holocaust. This book is based on Karen's CBC radio documentary, also called Hana's Suitcase, which appeared on The Sunday Edition (Canada)and which won the gold medal at the New York International Radio Festival.

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    Reviews for Hana's Suitcase

    4.5/5

    633 ratings108 reviews

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    • 5/5
      When the Nazis took over Czechloslovaki during World War II, life changed for the Jews. This is the story of how a suitcase donated to a small Japanese children's museum started a search for it's owner, a young Jewish girl.
    • 5/5
      This is the true story of young Hana Brady, her parents, and her older brother, George, and how their happy life in a small town was turned upside down by the invasion of the Nazis. A Japanese museum curator researching and setting up a Holocaust exhibit receives a suitcase and examines the contents, putting her in contact with a brother of the victim. The story switches back and forth between modern day Japan and WWII Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. George, who survives Auschwitz, immigrates to Canada after the War and settles in Toronto. The story describes how he was found and contacted to pay a visit to the museum and share his sister’s story.
    • 5/5
      This novel flips back and forth between two time periods. Fumiko is inspired to teach Japanese children about the holocaust so she discovers a suitcase that belonged to a girl named Hana. Fumiko begins to do research about Hana and soon unwraps Hana's story during the horrible holocaust. This book would be great to use when teaching students about the Holocaust and letting them do some research of their own.
    • 5/5
      " A biography of a Czech girl who died in the Holocaust, told in alternating chapters with an account of how the curator of a Japanese Holocaust center learned about her life after Hana's suitcase was sent to her."Sad, yet remarkable and touching accountHighly recommended
    • 5/5
      It was amazing it was really great.It helped me learn a lot about the Holocaust.
    • 5/5
      In 2000, the director of the newly-established Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center received a few artifacts belonging to children in response to appeals to museums around the world. One of the precious few artifacts loaned to her was a suitcase from Auschwitz with a polka dot lining and marked with the name Hanna Brady.The director, Fumiko, and the center children wanted to know more about Hana. Where was she from? What did she look like? Did she survive the Holocaust? Fumiko wrote letters, made phone calls, and even traveled to Europe to find information.By reassembling Hana’s life and recovering Hana’s voice, Fumiko and the center children have allowed her to speak to new generations of children to foster tolerance and peace so that the evils of the Holocaust will not be repeated. This book extends the center’s reach far beyond Tokyo, as all who read it will be inspired by Fumiko and the children she teaches as well as by Hana’s story.
    • 5/5
      This is a true story in which Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the Tokyo Education Resource Center in Tokyo, Japan, reaches out to museums for artifacts with which to teach Japanese children about the Holocaust. After much effort, she was given a package of items, of which one, a suitcase which had belonged to Hana Brady, a Czechoslovakian child murdered by the Nazis, motivated her to teach others about the Holocaust by breaking the experience down to just one individual and searching for more information about her.This book is written for school-age children, but it is well worth reading by any adult. I was surprised that anyone in Japan with their own suffering during World War II would put so much effort into learning about a Jewish child in Europe. However, the theme is the importance of learning about others who differ from ourselves culturally and seeking the human and decent things about them-- thereby learning how we are all more alike than different. The book not only tells Hana's story well, but it provides photographs to bring it alive and much closer to to hearts of those who read it. It’s beautifully done.
    • 5/5
      Hana’s suitcase was one of the most eye-opening and heart wrenching stories I have ever read, and the fact that it is a non-fiction book, makes it that much more real. From the beginning, this book captivated me and I could not stop reading. I could tell from the tone of the book that this would end badly. I felt like I knew Hana, after learning about her family and all the fun times they had, so it was hard seeing what she had to go through. This was my first time ever crying over a book. I give this five stars because it the way it was written was done so well and the photographs really pulled everything together.
    • 5/5
      This true story switches between two plotlines: Hana, a young Jewish girl who is sent to a concentration camp, and the Small Wings, a Japanese class who wants to know Hana’s history. This book is informative and still interesting and approaches a very important topic in a way thats easy to understand.
    • 5/5
      An amazing but sad story of an unfortunate time in history. Hana's story lives on thanks to a determined woman from Japan. Amazingly, people in Japan were so intrigued to learn about the Holocaust. The book flipped from past to present and vice versa, which I did not mind. I enjoyed the pictures and artifacts throughout the book as it gave life to the book. This book can be used in a history class learning about the Holocaust.
    • 5/5
      I've always loved things dealing with the Holocaust, but this book brought it to a whole other level! I love how the author aligned the stories so the reader was never bored and always eager to see what happens next. This book combines a teacher in Japan's journey to find out all she can about Hana to help her students become passionate, invested researchers while learning about the tragedies of genocide. It's exciting that the author gets the chance to meet personally with George, Hana's brother. Everyone knows Anne Frank's story, and people deserve to know Hana, too. This book tells one little girls story which this author and teacher has forever brought into the new century. I would recommend this book to everyone.
    • 5/5
      The book goes back and forth between two stories: one about Hana and her family before and during the Holocaust, and one about a Japanese woman who received a suitcase and searched for more information about Hana and her family.

      I like how the stories blend. One was equally as important as the other. I like the Japanese woman's persistence and the young groups interest in the suitcase, Hana, George and the holocaust in general and their eagerness to share what they learn with others in hopes that another holocaust will never happen again. I like Hana, her family and what they had up until everything fell apart.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed the historical content of the book and found the information to be very important for young readers to learn from (i.e- not repeating history), however, it was a really hard read for me. It took reading paragraphs again and again and even then I believe some fell through the cracks. Hana's story is an amazing one of a child during the Holocaust, it goes back and forth between Hana and Fumiko, a young curator of a small Holocaust education center in Tokyo trying to find all she can about Hana. The way the book travels from past to present is very interesting and keeps you engaged.
    • 5/5
      Hana Brady touched the lives of many even after her death. Her life story ends in tragedy yet lives on as an inspiration. I liked most the way that this story included so many positive outlooks. Hana Brady's suitcase was very intriguing although not much was in it. It contained her name and the word orphan written in Dutch. This suitcase opened up a doorway to a huge part of history, especially to Fumiko. Hana's story was able to make it from Auschwitz all the way to Tokyo. Learning of Hana's death and the circumstances that she had to live through was devastating and very hard to read. However, this is a great book with a lot of value. In a classroom setting, this would be something I would encourage my students to read, especially when learning about the Holocaust.
    • 5/5
      The reader takes a trip around the world to the Tokyo Holocaust Resource Center in Japan. A suitcase shows up with the name Hana Brady on it form a holocaust museum in Poland. The director, Fumiko, is determine to give the children at the center answers to their questions about the suitcase. She searches for answers and it leads her to Hana's brother, George, who survived and lives in Canada. George Brady gave lots of information and pictures to Fumiko that she later shared with the world. Being a big history and World War 2 fanatic, I absolutely loved this book!!!
    • 5/5
      This particular book brought tears to my eyes. The old saying along the lines of, "History is doomed to be repeated if we don't learn from it" has never resonated so true here with me. The story of a Japanese Holocaust museum teaching children about love, tolerance, and the past all at the same time is a beautiful one.
    • 4/5
      Fumiko Ishioka run a Holocaust education center for children in Tokyo, Japan. She wanted to teach Japanese children the history of the Holocaust. She knew that in order for the children to really understand the terrible story of what had happened to millions of Jews children, she need to find an artifact. She need a physical evidence that help them connect to the stories. So she wrote many requests to the Holocaust museum all around the world. Many denied because theses artifacts are way too important to hand over to the little small museum in Japan.After many attempts, a small suitcase belong to a little girl name Hana was sent to the Fumiko. And from there, Fumiko went on a journey to discover more about Hana and her past. The amazing story that connect two worlds together, the world of the children in Japan and the lost world of a Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia. I love how the book went back and forth from the present and the past, the story of Fumiko and Hana's story. I felt like I was on an adventure to solve a mystery with Fumiko. I couldn't put down the book because I too wanted to know what happened to Hana and see if she was still alive.
    • 5/5
      When a suitcase turns up in Tokyo, Japan, everyone has questions about where it came from. Fukimo searches for answers revealing a heartbreaking tale of a young girl and her family during the Holocaust.I would use this book in the classroom as a historical read and then provide the classroom with their own mystery to solve with another historical picture.
    • 5/5
      A unique book that shares one Japanese community urgency to find out everything they can about the young owner of a Holocaust victim's suitcase.This is truly a biography with a very unique structure as each chapter transitions from the Japanese students trying to find information about the Jewish girl, Hana, to the biography of Hana. As this book tells Hana's story, the reader wrenches as Hana experiences erroneous tragedies.This tragic story of Hana provides the readers with primary historical documents. I personally love how a Japanese community is the basis of this story as they are trying to learn about Hana. I also like how this tells Hana's story, as I personally only recall learning about Anne Frank, even though there were thousand of Jewish citizens that lost their lives.
    • 5/5
      This book is about a Jewish child in World War 2 who is living in a camp. A group of students in Tokyo are intrigued about a suitcase that they come across at a museum and want to learn more about this girl named Hana Brady. The museum coordinator begins a journey to find out more about this girl. This book is great to learn a more personal background of a child who was in a concentration camp.
    • 5/5
      Hana's Suitcase tells two stories at the same time. One story is about Fumiko Ishioka and her research to find out who Hana is and what her story is. The second story is about Hana and her life before and during the Holocaust. Eventually the two stories come together and tell of Hana's legacy. This is a great story about a woman's determination to find out what happened to Hana. This story teaches children about the Holocaust, but also teaches how to review primary resources.
    • 5/5
      I first read this book in about the 4th grade. I remember thinking how cool it was that there were real pictures and artifacts... now those real pictures and artifacts hit me harder. It is sickening to think of a child enduring the holocaust, but unfortunately many children did. The many books chronicling children's experience are crucial to teaching children today because it creates historical empathy and relatability. This book in particular was great because of the artifacts and research it contained, that made the "story" concrete.
    • 5/5
      Hana’s Suitcase is about a group of Japanese children, Hana, and Brady. Fumiko the director of the Holocaust Education Resource Center in Japan was determined to help children in Japan learn about the Holocaust, and she asked many museums to donate a few items for her cause. Many of the museums said no, but one day a suitcase arrived. The suitcase said Hanna Brady. Hana lived in Nove Mesto with her parents and brother Brady. Hanna enjoyed skiing, school, and playing outdoors. The family owned a store on the mainstreet in Nove Mesto, and everyone loved the Bradys. Once the Nazis conquered Europe, many Jews were transported to concentration camps. Hana and her brother were taken to a concentration camp, and her parents were taken to a different camp. Fumiko and the children from the resource center are intrigued by the suitcase, so Fumiko investigates the life of Hanna Brady and her family. Fumiko does everything she can to find clues about Hanna, and eventually she finds out that Hanna’s brother is alive. The book was emotional. Once I saw the cover of the book I knew the book was going to be about Jewish people being mistreated and abused during World War two . At the beginning of the book it was so interesting Hanna’s life in Nove Mesto. She had so much fun, and I wished it could have stayed like that. The death of Hanna was the saddest, and I want to honor her memory as well. I want to learn more about the Jewish culture and religion. The book gave me so much detail of how Jewish people were mistreated, and I liked how it told how the story of Hanna was discovered. I would love to expose students to more Jewish books, so that students can become aware of the horrible events that Jews had to go through during World War two. For an activity for kids I would want them to discuss what they did not understand. For example, kids might not know the significance of the star on the cover of the book.
    • 5/5
      Great short novel for children to read about the holocaust and a young girls story (who lived during that time). It is very educational and I actually learned a lot. Book does a great job of putting the reader inside the story. Would love to have my classroom read this one day!
    • 5/5
      Hana's Suitcase is a captivating true tale about the tragedy of Hana Brady and Fumiko Ishioka's determination to uncover the truth. When an anonymous donor gives the Tokyo Holocaust Center items from the Auschwitz concentration camp, among them was Hana Brady's suitcase. The suitcase contained only her name, birthdate, and that she was an orphan. Hana's suitcase captured the children's interest and they wanted to know more about Hana Brady, leading their teacher on an important mission. I love how the author alternated between Hana's family and life in a concentration camp as well as Fumiko's investigation into Hana Brady's tragic life. This definitely a story that's worth sharing with students to learn about how the Holocaust affected families.
    • 4/5
      Hana’s Suitcase written by Karen Levine is about a young Jewish girl named Hana Brady. Hana and her brother George were only children when they were separated from their family due to the Nazi Regime. In present times, a Japanese teacher, Fumiko, is teaching her students about the Holocaust. The teacher uses artifacts to help her children visualize and empathize with how it was to be a child during that time. The teacher received a suitcase to use in her museum, Hana’s suitcase. The children want to know more about the suitcase as well as the person who owned it. The teacher’s research into the suitcase provides some answers, both negative and positive. Due to the research done by Fumiko, the world now knows about Hana Brady. When teaching children about the Holocaust, this book can be used. It can also be used to compare the life of Hana Brady to the more popular Jewish girl, Anne Frank.
    • 5/5
      This book very interesting in how it transitioned from different time periods between chapters. It began with explaining Hana's suitcase and how it came to find a home in Tokyo, Japan. Fumiko Ishioka was the director of the Tokyo Holocaust Center and she wanted to get children interested in the history of the Holocaust. She decided to do an exhibit on children of the Holocaust and that is how she became in possession of the suitcase. The story then changes over to the background of Hana and George Brady's life. This book tells the story of their lives, but also explains how they impacted present day. This book was very intriguing and maintained my interest throughout.
    • 4/5
      A great, intriguing historical read. The story throughout switches back and forth from Hana's journey to Fumiko's journey to complete Hana's story. It keeps the reader pulled in following along these two stories and makes the reader fall deeper into the story. I enjoyed this story getting to see the Holocaust through a child's eyes and one that was not Anne Frank. It gives the reader another view into the Holocaust and allows them to connect with someone close to their age. Like Fukimo's students it engages readers to connect and sympathize with Hana and her story. I loved the happy ending and the closure Fukimo's students, and the reader, gets out of this book. This is a great book to read for history or reading class. Good book to use when studying the Holocaust. Maybe even a book to suggest to a child who loves history and may find interest in working in a museum of some kind one day.
    • 5/5
      This was a great piece of non-fiction about a young Jewish girl and her family, and how they were separated and killed during the Holocaust. It is told in a interesting way because it jumps from the narrative of the woman doing the research about the owner of this suitcase, Hana, to Hana's narrative (as told by her brother, who survived Auschwitz). This would be a good book to use when discussing point of view in non-fiction. It would also be a good book to use during a social studies unit on the Holocaust, or a literature study of Holocaust literature (I know this was a subject covered in my oldest son's 6th or 7th grade year, they used The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Number the Stars).I will say, from the perspective of a parent of a very informed, but emotionally sensitive child that this is a very difficult topic, emotionally, for some children. My son really couldn't read the literature. He knew what had transpired, but he is really so empathetic he would go into a great depression for weeks, and even months after reading something from the perspective of someone who was going through it. It really is a topic for older students. The only fuss I have is I disagree that the Holocaust is "the worst example of genocide...in human history." It was terrible, and tragic, and it is sad that such things continue to take place in places like Rwanda. However, an independent study based on census data, give a "best and worst case scenario" placing the figure at between 10 and 114 million Native Americans killed by direct US actions. Again, while not trying to diminish what Jewish people suffered, Native Americans, for all their "primitiveness" were no less human. Reading Level: 5.3 Interest Level: 5-8
    • 5/5
      During the time of world war II Jews went through many hardships. They were put into concentration camps and many were killed. Hanna was a Jewish girl who was sent to one of these concentration camps. Many years later it is believed that Hana's suitcase. A Japanese teacher then digs into history trying to find out what really happened with Hana and her family.