Hana's Suitcase on Stage

David E. Kemp is professor emeritus of drama at Queen’s University.

Painted on the outside of a suitcase that arrived at the Tokyo Holocaust
Education Resource Center in March 2000, on loan from the Auschwitz
Museum in Poland, were the words “Hana Brady, May 16, 1931” and
“Waisenkind” (the German word for orphan). Children who saw the
suitcase on display were intrigued by it. “Who was Hana Brady?” they
wanted to know. “What happened to her?” The center’s curator,
Fumiko Ishioka, decided to find out. Her searches for clues took her
back some 70 years and across Europe and North America to a small town
in Czechoslovakia that was invaded by the Nazis. Hana along with many of
the town’s citizens were rounded up for deportation; at first she was
sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp and then on to Auschwitz,
where she died.

In July 2000, it was discovered that Hana’s brother, George, had
survived the Holocaust and lived in Toronto. CBC radio producer Karen
Levine interviewed George about Hana and their lives before the war. The
information she collected led to Levine’s production of an
award-winning documentary; a biography, Hana’s Suitcase (The Holocaust
Remembrance Series for Young Readers), in 2002; and now this play, which
includes photos of Hana and her Brady family as well as drawings that
she made at Theresienstadt.

Performing this play is an excellent way for middle-schoolers to learn
about the Holocaust. Highly recommended.