"The Fate of Women Fighters: On the Paths of Self-Sacrifice and Struggle"

The socialist Yugoslav press frequently carried articles about Spanish Civil War volunteers, who were integrated into the broader narrative of the People’s Liberation Struggle, the official name of the Partisan resistance movement during the Second World War. Tens of thousands of women had participated in that conflict, sometimes as front-line soldiers but also in many other crucial positions, and played important roles in the modernization and reconstruction of post-war Yugoslavia. In the Spanish Civil War, there were sixteen women among the Yugoslav volunteers. Three of them were doctors and two were nurses, while among the others six were workers, two students, one a clerk, and the last two without occupations. At the time they were in Spain, the oldest was 43 years old, while the three youngest were only 22 years old. 

Most of the women volunteers went to Spain during 1937, coming either from the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or from countries such as Algeria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, and Uruguay. Some of them had been active in the workers’ movement or even been members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia before leaving for Spain. Prior to arriving in Spain, they attended a first aid course for those without medical training. Fifteen of them worked for the Medical Corps of the International Brigades at hospitals which were located in Murcia, Albacete, Benicàssim, Dénia, Madrigeras, Vic, and other towns. In addition to the primary job of treating wounded and sick soldiers, the women volunteers participated in training courses and organized reading circles, lectures, performances, and choirs for wounded Republican soldiers. Many of them took on additional tasks, such as the doctor Dobrila Mezić-Šiljak, who also managed a children's section in the hospital in Dénia. There were frequent encounters between the women volunteers and other Yugoslav volunteers in the hospitals, especially as the International Brigades suffered high casualty rates. According to memoirs, these encounters were filled with memories of working together before the war, relaying information on the situation in Spain and Yugoslavia, and offering encouragement to the soldiers before they returned to the front. 

The magazine article in the Zagreb weekly Arena is dedicated to Adela Bohunički, who had served in Murcia as a doctor during the Spanish Civil War and ended up in Slovakia with the resistance movement after being deported from Yugoslavia. The article fails to mention that she had been imprisoned by for several years, including on the infamous Goli otok, after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, although she was eventually rehabilitated and had a successful medical career until her death in 1978.