Hana's Suitcase

Nazis were the politicized soldiers who followed Adolf Hitler’s rule. They believed in eugenics and the creation of one perfect race of people and systematically murdered millions across Europe to eliminate the Jews. Nazis are described as terrifying in the text: They are “thugs” who call Jews “evil, a bad influence” (22). The Bradys’ lives, as Jews, are impacted by Nazi rule, and George Brady is the only named survivor of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in the book.

Jews and other people who survived the Holocaust are known as survivors. George Brady is the only survivor named in Hana’s Suitcase, though Fumiko Ishioka is also inspired by survivors she has met at educational conferences. Survivor narratives are critical to Holocaust education so the world can continue learning about what happened during the Holocaust. 

Nazis moved people around quickly and with intention. Jews, in particular, were deported from their hometowns or forcibly removed. Deportation implies governmental control over a person or group of people, like Hana and George, who are deported from their home in Nove Mesto to live in the ghetto of Theresienstadt. In the present day, the term deportation is often used to describe when a government forces a non-citizen to leave a country because they do not have the legal right to live there.