The Old Brown Suitcase.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Fourteen-year-old Slava arrives in Canada in 1947 with her parents, sister, and a suitcase filled with memories of a lost childhood. She is haunted by the memories of what she endured in Poland. She cannot forget the hunger, stench, and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto. Nor can she forget walking alone through the gate while the guards were looking the other way, or disappearing into a strange and unknown place to survive under a hidden identity. But survive she did, as did her parents. Her sister, Basia, died, but a new sister, Pyza, was born after the war ended. Now she faces new challenges in a new country.

The Old Brown Suitcase juxtaposes heart-wrenching scenes from a child’s life in war-torn Poland with the life of a teenager trying to adjust to a new country in a time of peace. Clearly this was not without its own difficulties, both from a cultural and anti-Semitic point of view, but in the end all is well. As Dr. Robert Krell notes in his foreword, Slava’s “capacity to make friends and keep them offer a key to the puzzle of how to overcome adversity.”

This is a work of semi-autobiographical fiction, clearly based on the author’s own childhood experiences, and is a new, revised edition of a book first published in 1994. The story is vividly told and will certainly bring the events recounted alive to its readers, whether individually or in a classroom setting. Recommended.