Hana Brady

{{short description|Czech Holocaust victim}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}} {{Infobox person | name = Hana Brady | image = Hana Brady small ROI.tif | birth_name = Hana Bradyová | birth_date = 16 May 1931 | birth_place = Prague, Czechoslovakia | death_date = 23 October 1944 (aged 13) | death_place = Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland | death_cause = Hydrogen cyanide poisoning (Zyklon B) | parents = {{ubl|Markéta Bradyová (mother)|Karel Brady (father)}} | relatives = George Brady (brother) | other_names = Hanička }}

'''Hana "Hanička" Brady''' (born '''Hana Bradyová'''; 16 May 1931 – 23 October 1944) was a Czechoslovak Jewish girl murdered in the gas chambers of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, located in the occupied territory of Poland, during the Holocaust. She is the subject of the 2002 non-fiction children's book ''Hana's Suitcase'', written by Karen Levine.<ref name="secondstory">[http://secondstorypress.ca/books/85-hana-s-suitcase ''Hana's Suitcase'': Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313114254/http://secondstorypress.ca/books/85-hana-s-suitcase |date=13 March 2012 }}; New edition with foreword by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. Second Story Press (product page).</ref>

==Biography== Hana Brady was born on 16 May 1931 in Prague, the daughter of Markéta (née Dubsky) and Karel Brady. Her family lived in Nové Město na Moravě in the Vysočina Region of Czechoslovakia. After the occupation of the whole of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939, the discriminatory Nuremberg laws began to be applied in this territory. Eight-year-old Hana and her older brother George (born Jiří Brady) watched their parents being arrested and taken away by the Nazis, and Hana and George never saw them again.<ref name="Knelman">{{cite web|last1=Knelman|first1=Martin|title=New film adds hope to Hana's suitcase|url=https://www.thestar.com/article/625995|website=Toronto Star|date=29 April 2009|access-date=6 February 2020|archive-date=18 October 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121018071926/http://www.thestar.com/article/625995|url-status=live}}</ref> Hana and George were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1944, Hana was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. While her brother survived by working as a labourer, Hana was sent to the gas chambers a few hours after her arrival on 23 October 1944. Her body was cremated with other victims in the ovens at the crematorium.<ref name="Peterson">{{Cite book|last1=Stagg Peterson|first1=Shelley|last2=Swartz|first2=Larry|title=Good Books Matter|url=https://archive.org/details/goodbooksmatterhunsepete|url-access=registration|year=2008|publisher=Pembroke Publishers Limited|isbn=978-1-55138-232-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/goodbooksmatterhunsepete/page/145 145]}}</ref>

==''Hana's Suitcase''== {{Infobox book | italic title = no | name= Hana's Suitcase | image= Valise d'Hanna Brady (Hana Bradyovà 1931-1944).jpg | caption= Hana's suitcase | author= Karen Levine | audio_read_by= https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/hanas-suitcase-a-true-story/146906 | illustrator= Karen Levine | country= Canada | language= English | subject= Life of Hana Brady and her suitcase | genre= Non-fiction | set_in= Japan (2000)<br/>Czechoslovakia (1930s; 1938; 1939; 1940–41;<br>1941–42; May 1942; 1944)<br>Czech Republic (2000) | publisher= Second Story Press | pub_date= 2002 | media_type= Book | pages= 112 | awards= National Jewish Book Award for Special Recognition | isbn= 9781842348413 | dewey= 940.5318092 | website= http://www.hanassuitcase.ca/ }} The story of Hana Brady first became public when Fumiko Ishioka (石岡史子, ''Ishioka Fumiko''), a Japanese educator and director of the Japanese non-profit Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center, exhibited Hana's suitcase in 2000 as a relic of the concentration camp.<ref name="yadvashem">Dalit Danenberg. The efforts she made to uncover the life story of the girl who owned the suitcase went far beyond any job description [https://www.parentmap.com/article/hanas-suitcase-and-teaching-about-the-holocaust].[http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/magazine/magazine_44/img/Teaching.pdf "Teaching Outside the Box"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081207043712/http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/magazine/magazine_44/img/Teaching.pdf|date=7 December 2008}} (PDF) Yad Vashem Education Awards 2006; retrieved 25 March 2010.</ref> Visiting Auschwitz in 1999, Ishioka requested a loan of children's items, things that would convey the story of the Holocaust to other children.<ref name="CBC-doc">[http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/features/hanassuitcase/ ''Hana's Suitcase''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090526003846/http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/features/hanassuitcase/ |date=26 May 2009 }}, CBC Sunday Edition radio documentary Web version, with family photos and Hana's artwork. With audio link to the documentary; retrieved 25 March 2010.</ref>

{{blockquote | text = I went to Auschwitz in 1999 and asked for a loan of some children's items. I specifically asked <nowiki>[for]</nowiki> a shoe, this little shoe, and I asked for a suitcase.

A suitcase – that really tells you a story of how children, who used to live happily with their family, were transported and were allowed to take only one suitcase.

[The suitcase] shows this journey. I thought an object like a suitcase would be a very important item to let children in Japan learn what happened to children in the Holocaust. | author = Fumiko Ishioka | source = }}

The suitcase turned out to be a very capable means of telling the story of the Holocaust, reaching out to children at their level.

{{blockquote | text = In Japan, the Holocaust is so far away. Some people don't see any connection whatsoever. But when they look at the suitcase, these children were really shocked.

That really helped them a lot, to focus on this one little life that was lost. They could really relate her to themselves and try to think of why such a thing could happen to a girl like her. Why the Jewish people? And why children?

They then realized there were one and a half million children. | author = Fumiko Ishioka }}

The suitcase has large writing on it, a name and birthdate and the German word, ''Waisenkind'' (orphan).<ref name="CBC-doc"/><ref>[http://www.hanassuitcase.ca/ Brady family web site] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110225042614/http://www.hanassuitcase.ca/ |date=25 February 2011 }}, hanassuitcase.ca; retrieved 26 March 2010.</ref> Ishioka began painstakingly researching Hana's life and eventually found her surviving brother in Canada.<ref name="canlit">Annika Orich. [http://canlit.ca/reviews/remembering_hana "Remembering Hana"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130624030207/http://canlit.ca/reviews/remembering_hana|date=24 June 2013}}, ''Canadian Literature'' book review; retrieved 24 January 2012.</ref> The story of Hana Brady and how her suitcase led Ishioka to Toronto became the subject of a CBC documentary.<ref name="CBC-doc"/> Karen M. Levine (born 1955), the producer of that documentary, was urged to turn the story into a book by a friend who was a publisher and whose parents were Holocaust survivors. Said Levine: {{blockquote | text = I first read about Hana's suitcase in December 2000. I read about Hana's suitcase in ''The Canadian Jewish News''. My heart started to beat. I fell in love with the story instantly. This was a different kind of Holocaust story. It had at its centre a terrible sadness, one we all know too well. But it had a modern layer to it that lifted it up, that had connection, and even redemption.<ref name="LW-KL">[http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/proceedings2003/levine.pdf Interview with Karen Levine] (PDF). Proceedings of the 38th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries in Toronto, ON. (15–18 June 2003); retrieved 25 March 2010.{{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329051258/http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/proceedings2003/levine.pdf|date=29 March 2012}}</ref> }}

In February 2004, Lara Brady, Hana's niece, discovered inconsistencies between the suitcase on display and the suitcase pictured with Hana's friend after the war in the 1960s. Not only did the physical suitcase appear newer than in the photographs, but the location of the handle was also reversed. In March, Fumiko and George Brady inquired about the suitcase with the director of the Auschwitz museum, who explained that a replica had been created based on the pictures after the original suitcase was destroyed in a fire in 1984, while on loan to an English exhibit {{which|date=August 2018}} in Birmingham. This fire was likely caused by arson (according to the director and police at the time.{{citation needed|date=August 2018}}).

As the museum personnel had omitted this fact when they loaned it to the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center, the fact that the suitcase was a replica had gone unnoticed for several years. The family and the Center assert that even as such, the replica's contribution to the cause of human rights and peace education is not lessened by its lack of authenticity.<ref>{{cite news|title=Hana's suitcase turns out to be a replica|url=http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/second_world_war/topics/1579-10653|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090411214729/http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/second_world_war/topics/1579-10653|archive-date=11 April 2009|work=CBC News}}</ref>

===Awards and recognition=== The 2002 book became a bestseller and received the Bank Street College of Education Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for non-fiction, the National Jewish Book Award, and several other Canadian awards for children's literature.<ref name="LW-KL"/> The book received a nomination for the Governor General's Award and was selected as a final award candidate for the Norma Fleck award. It has been translated into over 20 languages and published around the world.<ref name="yadvashem"/> In October 2006, the book won the Yad Vashem award, presented to George Brady at a ceremony in Jerusalem.<ref name="jpost.com">[https://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=175478 A Suitcase that Talks] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100611012221/http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=175478 |date=11 June 2010 }}, ''Jerusalem Post''</ref>

===Adaptations=== A play based on the book was written by Emil Sher. A film, ''Inside Hana's Suitcase'', appeared in 2009. The suitcase featured in the CBC documentary was not the original, but a replica. The real suitcase, on loan, was destroyed by neo-Nazi arsonists, who set fire to a warehouse in Birmingham, England, in 1984.<ref name="Knelman"/> The audiobook is available on certain websites. In 2011, a Hebrew version of the play was staged by the Nephesh Theater in Holon, Israel.<ref name="jpost.com"/>

==References== {{reflist|30em}}

==External links== *[http://www.hanassuitcase.ca Family website] *[http://www.radio.cz/en/article/47914 Radio Praha] *[https://www.npokokoro.com/hanassuitcase Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center] {{in lang|en}} *[http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/02/07/loc_hana.html Suitcase tells Holocaust story] at www.enquirer.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brady, Hana}} Category:1931 births Category:1944 deaths Category:Jewish children who died in the Holocaust Category:Czechoslovak civilians killed in World War II Category:Czech people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp Category:Children who died in Nazi concentration camps Category:Czech children Category:Theresienstadt Ghetto prisoners Category:People from Nové Město na Moravě Category:People killed by gas chamber by Nazi Germany Category:Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust Category:Fiction about refugees and displaced people Category:Child murder in Poland