A Look at the Holocaust

Hana’s Suitcase by Karine Levine
Hana’s Suitcase is intriguing from cover to cover. I enjoyed reading this story a lot. The author devotes certain chapters to Hana’s story. Other chapters are told from a teacher’s point of view, who is researching Hana’s life so that she can teach Japanese children about the Holocaust. This enables the story to be appealing to children and adults since it is told from different viewpoints.
The Holocaust interests me not only because I am Jewish, but because there are still many things left to discover about the past. In addition, I find World War II both intriguing and disgusting. I cannot bring myself to understand how people can treat others so horribly. This book gives information about how unfairly Jews were treated without being too gory for children to read. I found myself sympathizing with Hana and feeling her emotions with her. For example, when Hana and her brother were told they could not see “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at the movie theater because they were Jewish, I felt sad for them. Although many worse things happened, the little things add up and it’s just not fair. My biggest pet peeve is being rude to other people, so that is something I just can’t stand.
I recommend this book to both children and adults. I’m sure there’s many people that still do not know a lot about the Holocaust and this book is a good introduction to it. I would also encourage people to take the time to learn more about the Holocaust and World War II.