Title: Hana's Suitcase
Author: Karen Levine
Publish Date: Reprint edition (January 2003)
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Pages: 120
IBSN: 0807531472
Classification: Non-Fiction
Genre: Jewish History, Holocaust Studies
Annotation: The true story of Hana Brady and her family and their experience in and during the holocaust. The story flowers from suitcase that belonged to Hana and the belongings that were found in it.
Summary: A museum in Japan houses a suitcase with the name Hana Brady and the German word for Oprhan (Waisenkind). When children in Japan ask Fumiko (the museum curator) more about it, she sets out to learn all she can about the suitcase and the young girl who owned it. The plot thickens on every turn for Fumiko who received the suitcase (which was a copy) from Auschwitz. The original case was burnt in a fire (which to this day remains suspicious). The story follows the family through life and death (not all survive-sadly) and ultimately to Canada as an immigrant after the war.
Reading Log: As I read this book, my brother is on tour in Israel on Birthright. Always a touchy subject with me (and the rest of the world, of course) the holocaust is a familiar territory for me. However it was interesting to look at it from the Canadian ending point. It really goes to show how much I relate the story to my United States Ancestors. But at any rate, what's more, is the way the story goes back and forth between the past and present day Japan! Another perspective I never really thought about: the rest of the world and their perspective. It's written in a really engrossing way and its got pictures all throughout it! Not just of the past but of present day Japan and their studies of the Holocaust. What a book! Heart-wrenching.
Hana Brady Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hana_Brady
Brady Family Website: http://www.hanassuitcase.ca/
Second Story Press: http://www.secondstorypress.ca/books/85-hana-s-suitcase
