Vahida Maglajlić (17 April 1907 – 1 April 1943) was a Yugoslav Partisan recognized as a People's Hero of Yugoslavia for her part in the struggle against the Axis powers during World War II. She was the only Bosnian Muslim woman to receive the order.
Born to a Banja Luka qadi, Maglajlić was denied a higher education by her father. She took up various social and humanitarian causes, including women's rights. After Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers in April 1941, Bosnia became part of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state. Maglajlić entered the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in May and joined the growing Partisan resistance movement. Her high social status allowed her to inconspicuously shelter and equip local Partisans for several months, but she was eventually discovered by the authorities and sent to prison. After months of torture, Maglajlić escaped and joined the Partisans. She was an influential political figure in Bosanska Krajina until her death in combat with German troops in Mala Krupska Rujiška.
After the war, her remains were exhumed from Mala Krupska Rujiška and reburied at the Partisan cemetery in Banja Luka. Her image has been displayed on the cover of leaflets distributed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has sought to promote her as an example for Palestinian women.
Family, education and activism
Vahida Maglajlić was born on 17 April 1907 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then a condominium occupied by Austria-Hungary and later part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. She came from a prominent Muslim Bosniak family, the oldest of ten children of qadi Muhamed Maglajlić, president of Banja Luka's Sharia court, and his wife Ćamila. The household numbered seven women and fifteen men, with Maglajlić's paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins sharing the family home. As a child, Maglajlić played with broomsticks rather than with dolls, pretending that they were actually guns and horses. She also preferred boys as playmates, but soon had to take up responsibility for her eight brothers and a much younger sister.
Maglajlić had shown interest in handwork since early childhood, and so her parents decided to enroll her into women's vocational school in her hometown following maktab. At the time, few Bosnian Muslim girls attended secular school. Maglajlić aspired to continue her education in Zagreb and become a teacher, but her father considered it improper to have daughters educated away from home and refused to permit it. Maglajlić thus ran the household up to the start of World War II.
Although she did not pursue her education any further, Maglajlić became acquainted with Marxism and the labour movement through her brothers, who studied in Sarajevo and Zagreb. She was among the first Bosnian Muslim women to take part in the labour movement and through it became more closely involved with the women's rights movement. She was also active in the International Red Aid, and later presided over Banja Luka's women's organization. Her father allowed her to stop wearing her veil, but she outraged her family and townspeople by cutting her hair short. Maglajlić received marriage offers but on the condition that she quit her activism, and thus never married. She confided in her sister-in-law Ruža that the only man she could marry was the one she was dating, but her parents were unlikely to approve because he was an Orthodox Christian.
Second World War
Resistance movement
World War II erupted in September 1939; Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers a year-and-a-half later, and the Independent State of Croatia (; NDH) was established on 10 April 1941. A fascist puppet state, the NDH incorporated all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost all of Croatia and parts of Serbia. Maglajlić immediately began organizing resistance to the NDH authorities. In May 1941, she officially entered the outlawed Communist Party of Yugoslavia, despite her father's misgivings about the organization's attitude towards religion. Nevertheless, the NDH's atrocities against Bosniaks prompted him to support the resistance movement. Suspecting his loyalty to the new regime, the Ustaše forced Maglajlić's father to retire from his position as Sharia judge.