page_title: Vahida Maglajlić
section_title: Family, education and activism
hierarchical_section_title: Vahida Maglajlić / Family, education and activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Wedding photograph of the Yugoslav national hero Fadil Šerić (third from the right) taken on 12 April 1940. His sister-in-law Vahida Maglajlić, also Yugoslav national hero, is seated on the right.
context_page_description: Vahida Maglajlić 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.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: The wedding of Vahida's sister and Fadil Šerić, on 12 April 1940. Šerić and Vahida's siblings are standing; Vahida (right) and her sister-in-law are seated.
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