The Brady family and Hannah's briefcase
Topic: Historical Events, Wars and Revolutions
Before the Second World War, a respectable Jewish family, the Brady family, lived in the picturesque Nové Město na Moravě. Karel Brady ran a shop there and was actively involved in the social life of the town. His children Jiří (born 1928) and Hana grew up in a loving environment until their lives were tragically changed by the arrival of the Nazis. The family's fate began to be fulfilled when their mother, Markéta Brady, was arrested by the Gestapo for helping the Belgian resistance. Gradually, other family members were deported to concentration camps. Little Hana perished in the Auschwitz gas chamber, while Jiří was the only one of the family to survive the horrors of Terezín and Auschwitz. After the war, Jiří decided to leave Czechoslovakia in 1949 and settled in Toronto, Canada, where he became a successful businessman. He dedicated his life to lecturing about the Holocaust and preserving his family's memory. He returned regularly to his hometown until his death in January 2019, when he passed away just before his 91st birthday.
His sister Hannah's story gained worldwide attention with the book "Hannah's Briefcase". When Japanese educator Fumiko Ishioka discovered a small suitcase with Hannah's name on it at the Holocaust Education Center in Tokyo, she began to search for her fate. The book has been translated into 35 languages and has become a symbol of the innocent child victims of the Holocaust.
Today, a street bearing the Brady family's name commemorates them in Nové Město na Moravě - a quiet but dignified memorial to a family whose story has become a testament to a dark chapter in human history and a message of hope and the perseverance of the human spirit.
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