‘Hana’s Suitcase’ opens young minds to Holocaust’s lessons

By Andrea Waxman
of The Chronicle staff

When Karen Levine first learned of Hana’s suitcase in a small article in the Canadian Jewish News, “my heart jumped,” she later said.

The story of a Japanese Holocaust educator and her students’ search for the young girl whose suitcase they had obtained from the Auschwitz Museum so touched Levine that she “decided to come out of ‘exile’ and produce [her] first radio documentary in a dozen years.”

The result, titled “Hana’s Suitcase,” aired on Canadian Broadcasting Company radio in January 2001.

At the insistence of a friend, Levine then transformed this true story into a book with the same title. Several years later, Toronto playwright, screenwriter, radio dramatist, essayist and short fiction writer Emil Sher adapted Levine’s book for the stage.

In March 2006, Sher’s dramatic adaptation of “Hana’s Suitcase” premièred at Toronto’s Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People and after an extended run there, it toured Canada and was staged in St. Louis and Lexington, Ky.

Next week, on Friday, Sept. 14, Milwaukee’s First Stage Children’s Theater will open the first production of “Hana’s Suitcase” in which child actors, age 10 to 15, will play the roles of child characters.

Local middle and high school actors, Sophie Cohen of Bayside and Jessica Schmeling of Brookfield, will play Hana, and Zach Schley of Mequon will portray George. In addition, Mikela Zetley of Milwaukee and Alexis Block of Fox Point will appear in the ensemble.|

Intertwined stories

“I was moved by [the story’s] power, as are children who see it and few parents can get through it without tears,” Sher told The Chronicle in a recent telephone interview.

Though Fumiko Ishioka and her students at the tiny Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center eventually learned that Hana Brady, a 13-year-old Czech Jew, perished in Auschwitz, they discovered that her brother, George Brady, had survived and was living in Canada.

In the course of their search for any shred of evidence that would tell them what had become of Hana, the Japanese children learned a great deal about the Holocaust, with its attendant lessons on the dangers of ignorance, intolerance and hate.

“The story is equally about how the Japanese children connected with this Jewish child from another time and about Hana,” Sher said.

Rob Goodman is managing director of First Stage Children’s Theater and director of “Hana’s Suitcase.” He said in an interview in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center last week, that as the Japanese children gradually learn more and more about Hana, she goes from being “almost an object to becoming a real person.”

Goodman loves this story because it is “really well-written” and also because “through a miraculous series of circumstances, 45 years after her death … The spirits of these Japanese children resurrect the spirit of Hana.”

The framework of this story within a story also makes the Holocaust accessible in Sher’s view. “It would not have the same power if the educator and the children were Jewish,” because it would be natural for Jewish children to connect to this story, Sher said.

The Japanese children, “who are so divided from [Hana] culturally, religiously, geographically and historically,” become a doorway into the story.

“It has struck a chord with all audiences precisely because it’s about two cultures coming together from different historical times. It blurs the line between them” and makes the story universal, Sher said.

Life-changing connections

In March 2001, George Brady, now 79, traveled to Tokyo with his youngest daughter, Lara Hana Brady, now 24, to meet Ishioka’s students, who called their group “Small Wings.”

George was overcome with emotion at the sight of his younger sister and only sibling’s suitcase, at the efforts of Ishioka “who had worked so hard to find him and the story of Hana” and at the faces of the Japanese children “for whom Hana had become so important, so alive,” according to Levine.

These days, George and Lara Brady spend most of their time traveling and speaking about “Hana’s Suitcase,” according to Lara Brady, who spoke with The Chronicle by telephone this week. They also raise funds to support Ishioka’s work.

And they are currently filming “a major docudrama, tentatively titled “Inside Hana’s Suitcase,” slated for release next year,” Lara said.
Though her father never hid that he survived the Holocaust — he had a number tattooed on his arm and many of his friends were survivors, Lara said — Ishioka’s work, Levine’s book and Sher’s play have “changed our family’s personal lives dramatically.

“The phone is constantly ringing, we get hundreds of thousands of e-mails.” And living with Hana’s story and the Holocaust every day, “our family feels closer to the family members who didn’t survive,” she said.

The power of stories

Goodman said that First Stage stages a play with a Holocaust theme every six or seven years.

“We never shy away from difficult topics. We want children to experience learning in a safe place,” he said.

Keenly aware of his company’s power to touch children and educate them by giving them the opportunity to raise questions, Goodman is committed to bringing the Holocaust to life for this generation.

“History is only important in how it changes how we live our lives,” he said.

Noting that Hana’s story is just one of one-and-a-half million stories that could be told about children who died in the Holocaust, Goodman said Hana’s story represents them all.

“More poetic than literal,” the play tells “a beautiful story,” Goodman said. “It’s a sensitive and beautiful way to introduce children to the Holocaust” as well as to continue a discussion about the violence and genocide going on today.

First Stage Children’s Theater and the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center are partnering in a “‘Hana’s Suitcase’ Community Read” to encourage Milwaukee families to “read the book, see the play and meet the author,” Goodman said.

Karen Levine will appear in Milwaukee on Nov. 11 as a featured author of the JCC’s annual Jewish Book & Culture Fair.

“Hana’s Suitcase” will be staged at the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. It will run through Oct. 7.

First Stage will host extended post-performance talkbacks with playwright Emil Sher and George Brady after the evening shows on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 5 and 6, and with survivors from the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center’s speaker’s bureau on Saturday evening, Sept. 15, and Sunday afternoons, Sept. 16 and Sept. 23.

For more information call the Marcus Center box office at 414-273-7206. MORE STORIES