On February 3rd, 2026, we mark 105 years since the birth of Olga Jovičić Rita, national hero and the first woman political commissar in the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. Olga Jovičić was born in Užička Požega. Her father, Dušan Jovičić, a tailor, was a well-known communist. Due to police pressure, the family moved to Kraljevo, where Olga completed primary school and gymnasium.
Already in the sixth grade of high school, she became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia. As a good student, she was given the opportunity to run the school library, which she supplied with banned communist literature. She continued her political activities after going to Belgrade to study in 1939. She enrolled in engineering studies. She quickly joined the student movement and participated in the student demonstrations of December 1939. During these demonstrations, after the police used force, eight students died, including Mirko Luković from Kraljevo.
She became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1940. After the April War and the beginning of the German occupation, she returned to Kraljevo. In June 1941, during the German attack on the Soviet Union, the German occupation authorities in Kraljevo prepared to arrest communists. Thanks to a tip-off, most communists managed to escape in time, and those who were not were arrested on June 24th. Among the thirty or so arrested were Olga and her mother Ljubica Jovicic. Olga’s mother was soon released, while the remaining prisoners were scheduled to be shot. The first escape attempt, which the communists organized to free the prisoners, failed. The second attempt followed on August 4. Olga Jovicic then managed to escape together with Nikola Bugarcic, Danica (Koka) Jasnic, Cedo Kasalic and Dusan Petrovic. They jumped over the prison wall, swam across the Ibar and headed towards Goc, where they joined the partisan detachment “Jovo Kursula”. Danica and Olga were the first women to join the detachment. Olga also served as the head of agitation and propaganda in this detachment. She also participated in planning and carrying out attacks on German troops in Kraljevo.
In November 1941, she retreated with her comrades to the Raška region. The following month, the First Proletarian Brigade was formed in Rudno. On that occasion, Olga was appointed political commissar of the First Company of the Fourth Battalion, thus becoming the first female political commissar in the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. At that time, she was nicknamed Rita, after the commissar of the same name from the book “How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky. She participated in all the battles that her company fought in the following period. She also participated with them in the Igman March, during which the First Proletarian Brigade retreated across the frozen Igman Mountain in January 1942, with the aim of breaking through to the liberated territory in Foča. Together with the fighters of the First Proletarian Brigade, she also participated in the battles that were fought in the Bosnian Krajina area.
In the winter of 1942, her unit was surrounded in Romanija. Her company was tasked with closing the road to Rogatica. Olga was sick at the time and had a high fever, which is why she was ordered to stay in the infirmary. Despite this, she escaped from the infirmary and managed to catch up with them, making her way through the snowdrifts towards Jahorina and participating in the fighting with them. In July of the same year, she took part in the battles fought around the Herzegovinian town of Prozor. On July 13, she went to the village of Duge, where she spoke to Muslim women in order to convince them to provide assistance to the fighters of the Fourth Battalion, who were stationed there. When she was returning to her company, she was seriously wounded by a machine gun shot from an unknown direction. Her comrades carried her to the village of Duge, where she died. She was originally buried in this village, and after the end of World War II her body was transferred to the family tomb in Kraljevo.
She was awarded the Order of Merit for the People. By a decree of the Presidium of the National Assembly of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia of 20 December 1951, she was posthumously proclaimed a People’s Hero. Olga Jovicic is one of a total of ninety-one women to have received this honor. In 1977, her remains were transferred from the family tomb and buried in the Alley of Partisan Monument Bearers, completed a year earlier, at the Old Cemetery in Kraljevo. Today, one of the streets in the center of Kraljevo is named after her, and a bust of her has been erected in the park near Gospodar Vasin konak. A preschool in Kraljevo is also named after her.
Milena Baltić
Editor of the Education and Scientific Program
of the Official Internet Presentation of the National Museum Kraljevo