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Hana's Suitcase: A story of suffering

Museum program puts new twist on Holocaust history

By Adam Daniel Mezei
For The Prague Post
March 28th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Kids listen intently to the story of Hana Brady, a young girl killed in the Holocaust.
Six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Three million German citizens of the former Czechoslovakia, forcibly expelled from their country by the infamous postwar Beneš Decrees. One million Tutsis and moderate Hutus brutally slaughtered during Rwanda’s genocide. Then today. Hellish headlines blaring news of atrocities visited upon the hundreds of thousands of unfortunate Darfurians clinging to a thread of life at Sudan’s western edge.
Staggering numbers all around. Impossible to visualize, for most. It’s with this in mind that the Jewish Museum of Prague (JMP) is marking its centennial by introducing a new educational initiative. This unique, three-hour workshop series, called Hana’s Suitcase, aims to give Czech elementary and high-school students a better — and more intimate — understanding of what the millions of Jewish victims went through during the Nazi Holocaust. The program, unveiled in January, is based on CBC radio journalist Karen Levine’s 2003 radio program and book of the same name.
Hana's Suitcase

Jewish Museum of Prague
Maiselova 15,
Prague 1
Program director: Marie Zahradníková
Tel.: 224 819 352 or 222 325 172
E-mail: education@jewishmuseum.cz
Web: www.jewishmuseum.cz

“Most people have a tough time visualizing double their income, let alone 1 million people,” says Marie Zahradníková, the JMP’s head lecturer for Holocaust and Multicultural Studies, who oversees the program. “Teachers in this country typically tell pupils that 6 million Jews perished during World War II. Yet students just can’t relate to these figures on a gut level. It’s too abstract, too outside of them.”
The JMP felt that something had to be done to give Czech students a deeper connection with the victims’ stories — everyday people like them, whom they might have even walked past on the street.
The museum plans to offer Hana’s Suitcase three times a week. Following several rigorous roundtable discussions, museum officials decided the program’s format would focus less on facts and dates and more on critical thinking skills.
Following an introductory half-hour, detailing the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933 and the passing of 1935’s Nuremburg Laws — anti-Jewish decrees that barred Jews from functioning normally in everyday German society — Zahradníková distributes a “family package” to students, who are divided into groups of four.
Each package provides details of a real Jewish family who lived between 1923 and 1936. Students are also told of their families’ eventual fates. The students study the package for an hour, then presents their findings to their classmates. The kids then quiz each other to learn more about the victimized families.
Levine, the CBC reporter, penned Hana’s Suitcase after hearing about Tokyo-based teacher Toshiko Ishioka’s desperate search to unravel the mystery behind an old suitcase. The suitcase belonging to a Hana Brady and was on loan at Japan’s Holocaust Education Resource Center by the Auschwitz Museum.
Starting out with only the suitcase and Hana’s name, Ishioka’s quest to unearth the girl’s past lead to the discovery of her surviving brother George “Jiří” Brady, 78, who had been living in Toronto since 1948, after escaping the communist putsch that ravaged Czechoslovakia that year. Ishioka contacted Brady, who supplied her with a collection of family photographs and an obscure film reel displaying members of the Brady family back at their home in Nové Město na Moravě, west Moravia. Little Hana Brady had not survived the war. She was killed at Auschwitz, shortly after arriving in 1942.
JMP’s Zahradníková, who is not Jewish, describes how one of the first things young students ask her during the workshops is just what exactly does a Jewish person look like. To counteract what she describes as the “negative Jewish-stereotype myth” that festered during 40 years of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, she has often invited Holocaust survivors to workshops to talk with students. George Brady has been guest speaker three times.
“Czechoslovakia used to be one of Europe’s most diverse Jewish communities before the war,” Zahradníková says. “We’re often shocked to hear students’ false impressions of what Jews are or what Jews look like, and Hana’s Suitcase breaks down some of these false stereotypes by helping them realize that the deportees sent away on transports were once everyday people just like themselves.”
Students are often shocked to learn how similar the survivor is to themselves, Zahradníková notes.
“Jews are no longer viewed as these so-called exotic beings,” she adds. “It’s at that time when students come to deeply understand the tragic irony of the Holocaust, that regular people become the victims of a calculated plan of hatred.”
As the Czech Republic gets ready to assume the European Union’s rotating six-month presidency in 2009, Zahradníková says the JMP hopes to use Hana’s Suitcase to help teach a new generation about the dangers of trouncing human rights — one Czech pupil at a time.

Adam Daniel Mezei can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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[13:57 14/04/2007] : The author is hallucinating or does not know his history at all. To equate the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the war with the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust is ridiculous. Apart from being grossly incorrect, such frivolous comments only encourage German revanchism. The Czech expulsion of the Sudetens was a garden party compared to the abominable horror that the Sudetens and their German cousins inflicted on the Czechs and the Slovaks.

Admittedly, there must have been some excesses during the actual westward march of the Sudetens, but they got exactly what they deserved. The "infamous postwar Benes Decrees" were quite moderate and fully justified. Your correspondent must not be permitted to indulge in absurd mea culpas on behalf of the Czechoslovak people.

From his name, it appears he is not from your neck of the woods. Surely, a measure of respect to his hosts is called for.
Jay Bhattacharjee
New Delhi
[18:10 19/04/2007] : It appears that Mr. Bhattacharjee is himself hallucinating because if he would have followed Mr. Mezei's previous comments he would have realised that there is no substance for his statement, "To equate the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the war with the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust is ridiculous." Mr. Mezei has emphatically stated the same thing in a previous article and I suppose that Mr. B. must have been on one of his 'hallucinatory excursions" and missed the point entirely.

To imply that you know a person simply by referring to his 'surname' is not only insulting, it is inflamatory. I happen to know that Mr. Mezei's name is exactly from 'the region from where he writes' and I dare say his history knowledge is based on facts, while yours sir, are based on heresay.

Are you aware that you're preaching to 'the converted"?
I suppose seeing your name in print must have been very important to you Mr. Bhattacharjee, why else would you promote such falsehoods?
Velentina Factor
Toronto
[08:01 21/04/2007] : Normally, I would not have wasted my time replying to puerile and venomous comments by people like Ms. Velentina Factor. Her scurrilous observations on another contributor to a debate clearly expose her credentials or lack of them.

"Seeing my name in print" is not something that is of importance to me. Get real, lady. Just do a Google search and find out the number of references to my articles (not just "Letters to the Editor", with due apologies to my editorial colleagues in the Prague Post). I can also try and run down Ms. Factor by pointing out that her spelling skills need improvement ("inflammatory" has two "m"s, madame) but it is pointless. The main issues need to be discussed.

I was reacting to a specific article by the author. It is ridiculous and absurd to say that I should have kept in mind some earlier writing by the same author, when I made my observations on the current contribution. This reveals Ms.Factor's immaturity and demonstrates her lack of elementary logic. How can I be accused of missing a point when that point has not been made in the writing that is the subject of discussion ?

In the article of the 28th March, Mr. Mezei categorically places on par and equates the Holocaust with the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the war,through the Benes Decrees that are unequivocally labelled by him as "infamous". If Ms. Factor does not understand this, she seriously needs to upgrade her English, if not her history.

If Mr. Mezei's knowledge of history is to be assessed on the basis of this sample, the judgement, unavoidably, would be severe. Not for Ms. Factor, though. She would say it is based on "facts", while mine would be dismissed as "hearsay".

Has she thought of applying for a life-membership of the Flat Earth Society as yet ? The balmy winds of Lake Ontario have definitely played havoc with her history, logic, English spelling and comprehension.
Jay Bhattacharjee
New Delhi
[16:57 02/05/2007] : I am confused about why only the Jewish victims of the Holocaust are mentioned in this school program. I thought the total figure was 11 million and included Roma and gays, as well as political victims. (Actually, I heard a popular singer use the figure 14 million last month.) This is certainly very important to mention in the Czech Republic. When it is not, you wonder about some contemporary discrimination creeping into historical programs like this. A very bad lesson.
Lipa Brezenova
Prague
[22:47 02/05/2007] : Given that even the director of the Holocaust Museum at Auschwitz disputes the figure of "six million", it probably isn't fair for Marie Zahradni­kova to feed this propaganda to children. Perhaps Mezei can do some research before he writes his next article.
Jeremey Isaacs
Cambridge
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