Hanna Dimitri
1946 Malmö, Sweden
Hanna was sent from Majdanek to the Nazi factories in Hamburg. The working days there were long and hard. Hanna and the other prisoners were forced to search the bins for something to eat.
One day, white ambulances rolled into the forced labour camp in Hamburg. It was one of the Red Cross rescue operations. In early May of 1945, Hanna became one of the few Roma to be transported to Sweden. Under Swedish law, Roma were prohibited from entering Sweden until 1954.
Hanna was transferred between numerous war refugee camps and care homes. In the autumn of 1946, at the age of fifteen, she arrived at the Salvation Army’s girls’ home in Malmö. That same year she met Georg Dimitri, a Swedish-Roma man whose family ran a travelling carnival. In April 1947 Hanna and Georg were married at Klara Church in Stockholm.
