Sweden

Born in 1995 in Kristianstadt, Sweden
High school student at "Christian 4:es gymnasium"

"From Ravensbrück to Kristianstad" (2012/ 2013)

Fanny has been learning a lot about WWII in school. So much, in fact, that she believes it has made her and many others feel numb about the topic. In order to fight that numbness, she decided to look at the fate of prisoners of Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp.

Ever since she was a child, her grandma has been telling her about three women who stayed with her family after WWII. All of the three women were survivors of the concentration camp Ravensbrück in Germany. They came to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark by way of the white busses that the Red Cross organised. One of the cities in Sweden that took refugees was Kristianstad, Fanny's hometown.

In the newspapers the Red Cross called out for help from families, and many were willing to help. One of these families was her grandmother’s. Through her grandmother stories, Funny got a better view of the suffering the women experienced than from any book.

Fanny interviewed her grandmother, read a lot of testimonies of prisoners and of people who drove the busses, and looked at original articles from the local newspaper “Kristianstadbladet”. She never thought she would be as moved by this as she came to be. She finally stopped being numbed, which was her biggest goal.

Fanny Jonsson's paper was among the 10 best in the Swedish history competition 2012/2013. The topic was "(E) MIGRATION - Emigration and immigration in a local perspective".