Sweden: Iconic incident of woman swatting neo-Nazi with her purse was also captured on film
Hans Runesson was the photographer who captured the legendary image of a woman swatting at a neo-Nazi with her purse in the Swedish town of Växjö on 13 April 1985. In the photo, a 38-year-old woman uses her purse to hit a neo-Nazi who is marching during a demonstration by adherents of the “Nordic Realm Party”.
Film footage of the incident has recently been posted to social media. The woman was named Danuta Dielsson and she was born in 1947.
Originally from Poland, she began living in Sweden after she married. Her mother had been imprisoned in the German concentration camp of Majdanek during the war.
Dielsson would eventually commit suicide in 1987. In the year 2015, a sculpture capturing her action was unveiled in the town where it happened.
The unveiling of the sculpture was rather controversial, because critics claimed it supported committing violence. Dielsson’s family was also against her memory being immortalized in this spirit.
The image has become an icon of disagreement with neo-Nazism. Runesson’s photograph won the Swedish Photograph of the Year award.
