Marija Bursać

Marija Bursać was a member of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia and the first woman proclaimed a People's Hero of Yugoslavia. Bursać was born to a Bosnian Serb farming family in the village of Kamenica, near Drvar. After the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and their creation of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941, Bursać supported the Partisan resistance movement led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Like other women in her village, she collected food, clothing, and other supplies for the Partisan war effort. Bursać became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia in September 1941. The following August she was appointed political commissar of a company of the 1st Krajina Agricultural Shock Brigade, which harvested crops in the Sanica River valley, and was admitted to the KPJ at the end of that summer.