The Quest to Solve a Holocaust Mystery: Hana’s Suitcase

Tokyo, Japan, Winter 2000     Really, it’s a very ordinary-looking suitcase. A little tattered around the edges, but in good condition.   It’s brown. It’s big. You could fit quite a lot in it–clothes for a long trip, maybe. Books, games, treasures, toys. But there is nothing inside it now.   Every day children come to a little museum in Tokyo, Japan, to see this suitcase. It sits in a glass cabinet. And through the glass you can see that there is writing on the suitcase. In white paint, across the front, there is a girl’s name: Hana Brady. A date of birth: May 16, 1931. And one other word: Waisenkind. That’s the German word for orphan.   The Japanese children know that the suitcase came from Auschwitz, a concentration camp where millions of people suffered and died during the Second World War between 1939 and 1945. But who was Hana Brady? Where did she come from? Where was she traveling to? What did she pack? How did she become an orphan? What kind of girl was she and what happened to her?   The children are full of questions. So is the director of the museum, a slender young woman with long black hair named Fumiko Ishioka.   Fumiko and the children gently take the suitcase out of the glass case and open it. They search theside pockets. Maybe Hana left something that would be a clue. Nothing. Theylook under the polka-dot lining. There are no hints there either.   Fumiko promises the children to do everything she can to find out about the girl who owned the suitcase, to solve the mystery. And for the next year, she becomes a detective, scouring the world for clues to the story of Hana Brady.