Nina Hasvold

Nina Hasvoll (née Hackel, May 25, 1910 – December 19, 1999), surname also Hasvold and Hasvold Meyer, was a Russian–Norwegian psychoanalyst. She headed the Jewish Children's Home in Oslo during the Second World War, and she escaped to Sweden in 1942 with 14 children. and the 2015 film Ninas barn by Nina Grünfeld.

Background Hasvoll was born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg as Nina Hackel. Her father was a pharmacist and later a businessman, who became rich from a psoriasis ointment. As a result of the Russian Revolution, the family emigrated in 1918, like noblemen and other capitalists, to Germany, and settled in Berlin. She attended the social education seminar of the Youth Home Association in Charlottenburg. From 1931 to 1936 she studied at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. She attended analysis with Adelheid Fuchs-Kamp and was together with Nic Waal at the orphanage seminar led by Otto Fenichel and Harald Schultz-Hencke.

The developments after Hitler's rise to power resulted in Hasvoll fleeing to France. In 1936, she traveled to Oslo to study psychology. She joined the circle around Wilhelm Reich and studied character analysis with Nic Waal. The study of psychology offered a residence permit for only half a year. to obtain a permanent residence permit in Norway. The couple divorced in 1943. The children in the orphanage were first taken to Gudrun and Ragnar Karlsen's apartment in Grorud. From there they were taken in two pools to Gerda Tanberg's apartment in Ullern. There they lay under cover until Waal and Tanberg had arranged transport to Sweden. The flight to Sweden took place in two groups; Hasvoll and only the boys traveled first, and then the others. The children took a taxi to a log cabin at Kongsvinger. From there they traveled on foot across the border. In Sweden, they moved into the Engabo house in Alingsås outside Gothenburg. For the escape and the rescue operation, Hasvoll and her helpers were awarded Yad Vashem's honorific of Righteous Among the Nations.

After the Second World War, Hasvoll went to Denmark together with the German Jew Peter Meyer. The couple married in Copenhagen on April 5, 1950. In 1951 she became an honorary member of the Danish–Norwegian Psychoanalytical Association and practiced as a psychoanalyst in Copenhagen. Hasvoll was employed as the first psychologist at a Danish hospital. Her appointment was first made as a preschool teacher. When the job title was changed to psychologist, it took time for her services to be recognized because psychologists were also regarded by university professors as charlatans ( 'cunning women').

Nina Hasvoll died on December 19, 1999.