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Hana's Suitcase

Six decades after Auschwitz was liberated, the biggest and most brutal Nazi death camp remains a potent symbol of terror and genocide. More than a million Jews were murdered there, as well as tens of thousands of Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war. When Allied soldiers liberated the complex in Poland in January 1945, they found skeletal prisoners, mounds of corpses, gas chambers and cooling crematoria. Survivors scattered, many to Canada, to rebuild their lives. But the Nazi atrocities they witnessed have echoed through the years along with the cry "Never again."

It's a remarkable story of survival, perseverance and hope and it all began with a plain brown suitcase. As told in this excerpt of the award-winning documentary, the owner of the suitcase was Hana Brady, a Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia who died at Auschwitz in 1944. She was just 13. Her story would have been forgotten if it weren't for Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the children's Holocaust Education Centre in Tokyo.

Having received the battered suitcase for an exhibit at her centre, Ishioka became determined to find out about the girl whose name was painted on it.
Ishioka's mission brought her to Toronto where she discovered Hana's older brother, the only member of her immediate family to survive. Fifty-seven years after Hana Brady's death, George Brady recounts the life of the suitcase's owner -- his sister. 
• Karen Levine, the producer of the award-winning radio documentary Hana's Suitcase, wrote a children's book with the same title. Published in 2002 by Second Story Press, the best-selling book has been translated into more than 20 languages.

• The name "Hanna Brady," her date of birth, May 16, 1931, and the word waisenkind -- the German word for orphan -- are written in white across the suitcase. Although Hana Brady spelled her name with one 'n,' the suitcase bears the German spelling of the name with two 'n's.
• The CBC's Joe Schlesinger's television documentary, Hana's Suitcase: An Odyssey of Hope, won the 2004 Gemini Award for best news magazine segment.

• In April 2004, it was discovered that the suitcase thought to be Hana Brady's was a replica. Her niece, Lara Hana Brady, was looking at an old photograph of the original suitcase when she noticed a difference in the handle. The Auschwitz Museum then admitted that Hana Brady's actual suitcase was destroyed in England 20 years earlier. The museum had reproduced it. To see a clip about the discovery, click here.
Medium: Radio
Program: The Sunday Edition
Broadcast Date: Jan. 21, 2001
Guest(s): George Brady, Fumiko Ishioka
Producer: Karen Levine
Duration: 28:28

Last updated: July 25, 2012

Page consulted on February 14, 2013

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