Early Life
Hanna Kvanmo grew up in extremely poor conditions in the northern Norwegian rural region of Nordland. Her father was a fisherman and her mother was a factory worker. Her parents were divorced, and she was brought up mostly by her mother.
During World War II, the German occupation of Norway offered opportunities for poor people such as Hanna, who dreamt of becoming a nurse. As an 18-year old (in 1944), Kvanmo joined the German Red Cross as a nursing student. She was stationed for some time on the Eastern Front, and in the last days of the war, she found herself working as a practical nurse in Berlin, thus experiencing the horrendous circumstances during the bombing and fall of the city. After the German defeat, she was interned in the British sector of Germany and only returned to Norway in late 1947. In Norway, she was tried and convicted of treason on behalf of the German occupying authorities following the war. She was given an 8-month prison sentence, which was suspended after an appeal to the High Court, and a ten year suspension of her rights as a citizen. The International Committee of the Red Cross protested against Norway for the practice of convicting Norwegian nurses who worked with the German Red Cross, arguing that such convictions were in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which forbid the persecution of Red Cross personnel as a war crime. Nevertheless, any involvement with the German Red Cross society was considered an act of treason by Norwegian authorities, in contravention with international law.
Her activities during the war were often questioned later in her political career in the Socialist Left Party. In 1990 she wrote the book Dommen ("The Verdict"), where she made an open account about her reasons for joining the German Red Cross, and her experience of the treason trial. Among other things, she wrote that she experienced the conviction as such a heavy burden she considered taking her own life. The book became a national besteller in Norway, selling more than 83,000 copies.
After several years as a single mother working as a cleaning lady and cook, she married and passed the university entrance exam (examen artium) with distinction and worked as a gymnasium teacher at Rana Gymnasium from 1962 to 1973.
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