Hana's Suitcase

The increased back-and-forth of these short chapters heightens the tension as Hana’s experiences in the Holocaust are unveiled. As Levine describes Fumiko’s perseverance in discovering more about Hana, she also shows Hana’s descent into more oppressive conditions as she lives in the Theresienstadt ghetto for two years. By directly juxtaposing these two narratives, Levine makes explicit the story’s high stakes, both for Fumiko as she unearths Hana’s story and for Hana as she navigates oppression at the hands of the Nazis. The non-linear structure of the book’s narrative is used artfully in these chapters to move toward a climax and more deeply connect Fumiko and Hana across time. Objects like Hana’s suitcase and her drawings also serve as core symbolic parallels between the past and present, so readers can see the two narratives moving together.

Levine continues to directly portray some of the more nuanced aspects of the oppression that Jews faced during the Holocaust. Hana’s experience at Theresienstadt includes eating moldy or old food and living with rats, which are typically associated with bad living conditions. Yet Levine spends more narrative time describing the impact of isolation and separation; Hana is upset by not seeing her brother and not being permitted to go outside. Nazi strategies during the Holocaust were not solely based on deprivation or mistreatment; they also used tactics to control and impact people’s emotions to make it easier to confine and oppress. It is clear through Levine’s writing that the Theresienstadt ghetto would be a difficult and traumatic experience to survive, especially for a young child like Hana.

Chapter 14, which describes Fumiko’s exhibit of children’s objects in Tokyo, is an important moment in the book that illustrates a core theme of Levine’s intention in writing about Hana’s life: Children’s Resilience in the Face of Oppression. Seeing the Holocaust through children’s perspectives differs greatly from museums and narratives that show adult perspectives. For adults, learning about a child’s perspective of oppression and violence may inspire deeper empathy. For children, seeing objects that belonged to people their own age might be a way to engage them more deeply in learning and developing their own opinions about history and the present day. In crafting her book about a child’s experience, Levine helps show what the Holocaust would have been like for young Hana, achieving similar goals to Fumiko through her exhibit.