 Marija Bursać ( Serbian Cyrillic : <unk> <unk> ; 2 August 1920 – 23 September 1943 ) was a Bosnian Serb member of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia and the first woman proclaimed a People 's Hero of Yugoslavia . Bursać was born to a farming family in the village of Kamenica , near Drvar . After the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and their creation of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941 , Bursać supported the Partisan resistance movement led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ( KPJ ) . Like other women in her village , she collected food , clothing , and other supplies for the Partisan war effort . Bursać became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia in September 1941 . The following August she was appointed political commissar of a company of the 1st Krajina Agricultural Shock Brigade , which harvested crops in the <unk> River valley , and was admitted to the KPJ at the end of that summer . 
