Jovanka Budisavaljević, a Serb from the village of Pećane, was born on the territory of today's Croatia on December 7, 1924.
The Budisavljević family was very respectable in Lika, and her cousin was also the scientist Nikola Tesla.
She joined the Partisans at the age of 17 and went to fight against the Nazi occupier.
During the war, she was wounded twice, and she also contracted typhus. Then she lost her father and two brothers, and the younger sisters ended up in an orphanage.
At the age of 21, she received two Orders for Courage, and she is also the bearer of the Partisan Memorial in 1941. She met Josip Broz Tito during the German landing on Drvar in 1944. After the end of the Second World War in 1946, she was transferred to the Marshal's Office - the office of Josip Broz, and later became Tito's personal secretary. That's where love was born. In 1952, she became Broz's third wife, but also the first "first lady". Jovanka was 28 at the time, and Tito was 60. The announcement of their marriage immediately won over the media. In Rome and Opatija, she learned about protocol meetings. His Ličanka was described as an enchanting brunette, with big eyes and lush hair. By her appearance, Jovanka was his ideal partner.
She had to make up for the lack of education quickly after her marriage, so Tito sent her to Opatija and Rome. That is how Jovanka learned how to behave in protocol meetings and how to dress. For her, a professor even came from Russia who taught her Russian, and she taught French and English at the same time. Soon, Jovanka transformed from a soldier into a noble woman.
She became the first lady in every sense of the word.
Jovanka became what most of the older generations remember - richly dressed, decorated, smiling, with a high bun on her head, ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the world's greatest ladies of that time. She was adorned with innate spiritual and physical beauty, wit, maximum sacrifice, a dignified phenomenon on all occasions, which fascinated foreign statesmen and their wives, causing admiration among them.
She knew how to respect foreign statesmen. They give her some material with their traditional ethno motifs, the next time Jovanka appears in a dress made of that material. She had the ability to do some non-verbal diplomacy. there were also those who claimed that Jovanka's influence went far beyond receiving and smiling in front of the camera.
It was claimed that she had state ambitions, that she was plotting, that she was a Soviet agent, that she participated in a conspiracy against Aleksandar Ranković, that she planned a coup and was preparing to become "Tito after Tito" . Already during 1975, Jovanka was absent from some trips. In the same year, Tito moved to Beli dvor without her, while she stayed at Užička 15. It was a public secret that the first lady and the president did not get along well and that quarrels were commonplace. However, there was silence about that, and a formal divorce never took place.
For the last three years of Tito's life, Jovanka did not see him. However, only two months after his death, she was, with the seizure of documents and belongings, evicted from the residence. And then everyone forgot about the former first lady of the state, who soon fell apart in a bloody war… Her appearances in public were reduced to visits to the House of Flowers on the anniversary of Tito's death.
For many years, Jovanka Broz lived in unbearable conditions. Without any documents, she lived in a house without heating, where the roof is leaking, and the electricity often goes out. Rasim Ljajic, the then minister, reacted to media reports that there is no country in the world where the former president's wife is treated like that, but offers for hospitality and help came from the entire former state and for a moment reunited the divided peoples.
Towards the end of her life, Jovanka Broz received documents again - first a health card, then an ID card and a passport. Already old and ill, she thanked the state for its "care" and continued to live in seclusion.
It was from the house where she was first detained, and then locked herself up, that she was transported to the hospital at the end of the summer of 2013, where she died. At her own request, she was buried in the House of Flowers on October 26, 2013.
Source and photos
Google.com
She was supposed to rule after him, Tito did not give a divorce, if they constantly pressured him. That is how her life was most likely saved. They returned her documents only when everything was over. The disintegration of Yugoslavia was deliberately provoked. That is what the older people say.