'Hana's Suitcase' marks 20 years of teaching young readers about the Holocaust

The book Hana's Suitcase by Canadian author Karen Levine has been translated into 40 languages, won over a dozen literary prizes, adapted into a stage play and been the subject of a documentary.

The book tells the story of how a wartime suitcase belonging to a Czech Holocaust victim, 13-year-old Hana Brady, wound up in a Japanese museum in 1999. The curator's search for Hana's identity would reveal more about how she lived in the Theresienstadt camp, before the Nazis murdered her in Auschwitz. But it also led the Japanese researcher to find Hana's surviving older brother, George Brady, who was still alive and living in Toronto.

The Canadian publisher, Second Story Press, has re-released the book in a special 20th anniversary edition.

Just ahead of a public event on Oct. 30 in Toronto marking the milestone anniversary, author Karen Levine and her publisher Margie Wolfe tell The CJN Daily why the message of the book is even more important to share today with a new generation of readers (and their parents.)

What we talked about:

• Find out more about Hana's Suitcase and where to buy it
• Discover the Brady family's website run by George Brady's daughter Lara Hana Brady
• Read the original CJN story from 2001
• Read George Brady's obituary in The CJN from 2019

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