A woman Hitting a neo-Nazi with her handbag is a famous photograph taken in Växjö, Sweden on 13 April 1985 by Hans Runesson. It depicts a 38-year-old woman hitting a marching Nazi-skinhead with a handbag. The photograph was taken during a demonstration of the Nordic Reich Party supporters. The angle of the photo, her posture, facial expression, and what she’s wearing makes her look a lot older than she really is. The picturet was published in the next day’s Dagens Nyheter and a day later in some British newspapers. It sparked a huge discussion in Sweden, and the woman – who suffered from anxiety and hated the sudden media spotlight – ended up committing suicide two years later.

The woman in the photograph is Danuta Danielsson. She was of Polish-Jewish origin, her mother had been in a concentration camp and she got very angry when she saw the young Nazis in her quiet town. When the incident happened she had only lived in Sweden for a few years. Dunata met her future Swedish husband at a jazz festival in Poland and shortly after that they were married. Her acquaintances described her as energetic and positive during their first years in the new country. But she had a darker side, sometimes she was mentally fragile. Very often she screamed menacingly to people on the streets, sometimes she muttered to herself. She was also treated at a psych ward and eventually threw herself from a water tower in 1988.

The neo-Nazi’s name was Seppo Seluska who was a militant Nazi from the Nordic Reich Party, later convicted for murder. He tortured and murdered a Jewish homosexual later the same year.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/woman-nazi-handbag-sweden-1985/