Stana Tomašević (1920–1983) was a Yugoslav Partisan officer during World War II, a model, and a politician and diplomat. She served as president (that is, speaker) of the Federal Chamber from 1979 to 82.

Stana Tomašević in 1944
Stana Tomašević with President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito in Belgrade in 1963

Biography

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She was born in Montenegro and studied to become a teacher. She graduated not long before the Kingdom of Italy occupied Montenegro in 1941. As an idealistic young patriot, she immediately joined the Partisans and became the first woman commissar in Yugoslavia. She was wounded twice and ended the war highly decorated with the rank of colonel.

In May 1944, the Germans attempted to capture Josip Broz Tito in the Bosnian town of Drvar; Stana's battalion played an important role in defending Tito. While she was in Drvar, the British military photographer John Talbot took inspiring pictures of her that were dropped as leaflets over Europe to encourage resistance to the occupiers. The photos became widely known to European resistance fighters.[1] Her brother Duško was killed by Chetniks while fighting in Bosnia.[2]

After the war, she served as a federal minister in the Yugoslav government and was the country's first woman ambassador - to Norway and Iceland (1963-1967) and later Denmark (1974-1978).[3] In Norway, she met and married film-maker Eugen Arnesen, who died in 1969. She died of cancer in 1983, shortly after retiring as President of the Federal Chamber of the Yugoslav Parliament, the country's highest-ranking woman at that time.[4]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Cathie Carmichael (2 July 2015). A Concise History of Bosnia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 88–. ISBN 978-1-107-01615-6. Archived from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  2. ^ The South Slav Journal. Dositey Obradovich Circle. 2009. p. 140. Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  3. ^ Yugoslavia. Skupština (1977). Yugoslav Assembly. Univerzum. Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2016-10-06. From 1958 to 1963, Stana Tomasevic-Arnesen was assistant federal secretary for labour and labour relations, and after that, until 1967, Yugoslav ambassador to Norway and Iceland. At that time she was also a member of the Central ...
  4. ^ Tomasevic, Bato (2008). Life And Death In The Balkans. C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-1850659136.
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