The Woman with the Handbag (Swedish: Kvinnan med handväskan) is a photograph taken in Växjö, Sweden on 13 April 1985 by photojournalist Hans Runesson. It shows a woman hitting a Neo-Nazi with her handbag. The photograph was taken during a small demonstration of the Nordic Realm Party supporters after a public speech delivered by a Communist leader. The photo was published in a Swedish newspaper the next day and picked up by the London Times and Daily Express.
The woman in the photo, 38-year-old Danuta Danielsson, was a Polish Jew whose mother survived a German concentration camp during the Holocaust. She met her Swedish husband at a jazz festival in Poland. She died by jumping off the Växjö water tower two years later.
Her name was unknown until 2014, when it was uncovered during debates over the installation of a statue as a public memorial of the confrontation. Her son strongly opposed any such statue and city council members were concerned such a statue could be interpreted as promoting violence, The photographer also opposed the statue, feeling it lacked context. To protest the opposition, people across Sweden began hanging handbags from random statues.
Hotel entrepreneur Lasse Diding bought the statue, designed by local artist Susanna Arwin, with the intent to donate it to Varberg municipality, a coastal town about 200 km west of Växjö. The statue was unveiled at Varberg Fortress, but the Varberg board of culture voted in April 2016 not to accept the donation. The statue is now in the garden of Diding’s Villa in Varberg .
