Jovanka Broz - Early Life

Early Life

Jovanka Budisavljević was born in the village Pećane, Lika (in today's Croatia), into a peasant family to father Milan and mother Milica. She grew up with two brothers, Maksim and Pero, and two sisters, Zora and Nada. Jovanka was very young when their mother died and their father remarried, meaning that much of her childhood was spent with a stepmother.

World War II broke out when she was 16 years old. The family was forced to flee the Ustasha regime that took power in the newly created Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia. Their house was eventually burned down by the Ustashe.

At 17, Jovanka joined the Partisans and was assigned to the Prva ženska partizanska četa (First female Partisan brigade), where she quickly distinguished herself as an excellent marksman. After the brigade was disbanded, she was reassigned to First Corpus' headquarters where she worked as a nurse. She was on the scene in Drvar in the summer of 1944 during the German raid codenamed Operation Rösselsprung, where she greatly helped out in the evacuation of the wounded. She saw Tito for the first time there. She continued as a nurse until the end of the war, advancing to the rank of captain in the Fourth Lika brigade. She was wounded twice during the war.