Hana's Suitcase

Some twenty five years ago, in a small, nondescript building in downtown Tokyo, children gather to look at a suitcase displayed behind glass. They write poems and draw pictures about the suitcase because of the tragedy it represents. The suitcase came from Auschwitz. 

This suitcase belonged to Hana Brady, who was born in the Czech Republic, and whose life was brutally cut short by the Holocaust. She was first deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, and then to Auschwitz in 1944 where she died at the age of 13. 

A Holocaust education center in Tokyo acquired the suitcase with no further information about Hana. So, its director, Fumiko Ishioka, made it her mission to find out more of Hana's story.

Her search brought her to Toronto and George Brady. He is Hana’s older brother, the only member of their immediate family to survive. For him, the reappearance of the suitcase in Japan, 57 years after Hana’s death, was absolutely astonishing.  

Produced by Karen Levine/originally aired in 2001 on The Sunday Edition 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit