Hana's Suitcase

Originally published in 2002 by Second Story Press, Hana’s Suitcase is a historical text by Karen Levine that weaves together the story of two young children in the Holocaust with the narrative of a Japanese museum curator in the early 21st century. Levine, a radio journalist and producer, first heard about Hana Brady’s suitcase from a news article and subsequently produced a radio show about the story. This launched what would become Hana’s Suitcase and has evolved into an international project of connection. The story moves between the recent present day and the events that led up to the Holocaust, focusing on the Brady family in Czechoslovakia. Levine has been awarded numerous honors for Hana’s Suitcase, including the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for nonfiction and the National Jewish Book Award.

This study guide refers to the Scholastic edition of Hana’s Suitcase, published in 2006.

Content Warning: The text contains descriptions of children’s experiences of the Holocaust, including unhealthy living conditions and proximity to death and dying people.

Summary

Hana’s Suitcase is a non-linear story that switches between three sets of people: the Brady family in 1940s Czechoslovakia, the children and museum director of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center in the early 2000s, and surviving members of the Brady family in Toronto, Canada, also in the early 2000s.