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. Visiting
Auschwitz in 1999, Ishioka requested a loan of children's items, things that would convey the story of the Holocaust to other children. The suitcase turned out to be a very capable means of telling the story of the Holocaust, reaching out to children at their level. The suitcase has large writing on it, a name and birthdate and the German word,
Waisenkind (orphan). Ishioka began painstakingly researching Hana's life and eventually found her surviving brother in
Canada. The story of Hana Brady and how her suitcase led Ishioka to
Toronto became the subject of a
CBC documentary.
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.
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. The audiobook is available on certain websites. In 2011, a
Hebrew version of the play was staged by the Nephesh Theater in
Holon, Israel. ==See also==