Karen Levine, Hana’s Suitcase: The Quest to Solve a Holocaust Mystery; © 20r Te02, 2012; Random House Children’s Books; ISBN 978-1-101-93349-7; 135 pages, $9.99.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Perhaps because I’m in the process of researching a local biography, I’m all the more impressed by the resourcefulness and stick-to-it-iveness of Fumiko Ishioka, the curator of a small Holocaust museum in Tokyo, who was determined, just determined, to find out more about the girl Hana Brady, whose suitcase with the German word for “orphan” written across it, had been sent as an artifact to Ishioka’s museum.
Children who visited the museum gravitated to the suitcase, which was of a size that they themselves might carry. Who was Hana? What was she like? What did she pack to take with her? Ishioka wrote to curators at Auschwitz to see if she could get more information. None available, she was told.
Perhaps Yad Vashem might know something. Nope. What about the U.S. Holocaust Mdrauseum in Washington? The same negative result. Seemingly, nobody knew anything about Hana Brady, but Ishioka just wouldn’t give up. Someone, somewhere, must know something about this mysterious young girl, whose only identity seemed to be an orphan’s suitcase. And then the Auschwitz museum wrote to her again. It had learned that Hanna Brady had arrived at Auschwitz from the Jewish ghetto at Theresienstadt, as it was called in German, or Terezin, as it was known in Czechoslovakia.
Ishioka immediately wrote to the curator at Terezin, asking for any information, or artifacts, that might connect to Hana Brady, and that would help her teach the lessons of the Holocaust to Japanese children living half a world away. The answer wasn’t immediate, but eventually the museum at Terezin did respond. In a package were drawings that actually had been drawn by Hana. With primitive stick figures, and out of proportion buildings and fences, the drawings gave a child view of what it was like to be shut up in a ghetto.
The Tokyo curator was thrilled, but she was determined to learn still more about Hana, to add flesh to the bare bones story of the young girl’s life. Parlaying a conference in Europe with a trip on her own limited funds to Czechoslovakia, she visited Terezin, only to find that almost no one was there – it was a holiday of some sort. She had come all that way, and would have nothing to show for it. She wandered into a building that was open, and she and a member of the curator’s staff who was putting in extra hours scared each other when they had a sudden encounter. The place is closed, the woman said. Come back tomorrow.
No, I can’t, responded Ishioka. I have to return to Tokyo and can’t come back tomorrow. So earnest were the Japanese curator’s pleas, and so obvious was her distress, that the Terezin staff member agreed to try to help her. She rummaged through files, and eventually found a list with Hana’s name on it.
There was a check by Hana’s name.
It meant that she was murdered by the Nazis.
Ishioka was crushed. She had been hoping against hope that Hana had lived through the Holocaust, that she could bring the happy news – and maybe someday, even Hana herself – to meet the children who had been so moved by her story that they formed a ‘Small Wings’ Club to tell other children about the Holocaust and why it is so important for people to treat each other with kindness and respect.
But wait, what was this? On the next line of the document was the name of another Brady, a Georg Brady, who appeared to have been some years older than Hana.
And by his name, there was no check mark.
Perhaps he was a brother and had survived?
The Terezin staff member dug deeper into her files, trying to find a document with Georg’s name on it. As the time neared when Ishioka would have to leave, if she were to return to Prague for the next day’s flight back to Tokyo, the woman found something and a look of shocked recognition spread across her face.
On the same list of children who had been assigned to a certain barracks of Terezin was the name of Kurt Kutouc, who still lived in the Czech Republic, a man whose name she knew. Perhaps the Jewish Museum in Prague would know how to get in touch with him.
Before her flight, ishioka went to the Jewish Museum in Prague. A woman there also knew of Kurt Kotouc. She made phone call after phone call till she reached his office, and then convinced a reluctant secretary to allow her to speak to him.
When Kotuoc heard what Ishioka’s mission was, he made a decision to come over to the Jewish Museum, even though he had a flight to catch and it was already past the museum’s closing hours. He had news to give Ishioka, the kind that is better delivered in person.
Georg was still alive! He told her. He was living in Toronto, Canada. He was married and had children of his own. He gave her contact information. Ishioka could not believe it. The brother of the girl who had inspired the Small Wings Club, and who had come to mean so much to her personally, was actually alive. She could think of nothing else on her flight, and wrote to him at once.
It took a very long month before Georg’s answer came in the form of a package with photographs of Hana inside. Before long, Ishioka traveled to Toronto and learned from Georg all about his and Hana’s childhood — how first the Nazis came for their mother, then for her father, and eventually for them. She learned how they were separated at Terezin, but found ways to stay in touch.
Karen Levine, an incredibly talented writer, put both stories together in Hana’s Suitcase, alternating chapters about Hana’s life with chapters about Ishioka’s unremitting search to learn Hana’s fate. The book captured the imagination of many people. Stage productions have been based upon it. Ishioka and Georg–as well as members of Georg’s family–have told the story to various audiences again and again. Small Wings have spread; other children know the story of Hana, even as previous generations knew and internalized the story of Anne Frank.
Personally, I was inspired by Ishioka. There are many twists and turns when you are researching a biography. People whom you hope will be be able to tell you things, really can’t. Documents you hope to unearth aren’t where you hoped they might be. None of this deterred Ishioka. And none of this, I reiterated to myself, should stop me.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name as well as by his/her city and state of residence. (City and country if outside the U.S.)