Hana’s Suitcase Packs Message of Tolerance at Junior Empowerment Conference
By Rob Faulkner
Author Karen Levine with Gatestone students at the fifth annual Junior Empowerment Conference.
About 600 students in grades 3 to 6 had the opportunity to interact with keynote speaker Karen Levine as the author spoke about her award-winning book Hana’s Suitcase at the Junior Empowerment Conference on February 3.
Her story – which covers 70 years, three generations and three continents – tells of how a young Hana Brady’s family life in Prague was turned upside down by the invasion of the Nazis, and how finding her suitcase allowed her story to finally be told.
The fifth annual conference continued a long history at HWDSB of learning through the story of Hana’s Suitcase. In 2010, every school in the system received a suitcase packed with learning materials to explore social justice, tolerance and respect using the Holocaust as the centralizing historical example.
This year, students from 55 elementary schools met Levine, received a copy of her book and engaged in interactive social justice workshops so the day had a lasting impact. Schools received lesson plans and activities; staff engaged in thinking about equity, bias and sensitivity when incorporating Aboriginal literature into their teaching.
Levine, former executive producer of CBC Radio’s As It Happens, was glad to attend the conference because “empowerment is what the story I have to tell is all about.”
For Levine, Hana’s story began with a radio documentary. The story tells of how Fumiko Ishioka, director of the Holocaust Education Resource Centre in Tokyo, asked the Auschwitz Museum for an artifact to help her students understand the Holocaust that killed six million European Jews.
Ishioka received Hana’s suitcase.
It led to an international detective story of sorts, as the educator located Hana’s brother George. The Brady siblings were both sent to Auschwitz, but at separate times. George survived and eventually settled in Toronto. Hana was killed immediately; she never used the suitcase she had packed.
“First and foremost, the book is about the past – the horrible price of war and racism,” Levine told students at the conference. “But the story is also hopeful – about making the world a better place.”
Updated on Thursday, February 04, 2016.