Jovanka Broz

Jovanka Broz (; ; 7 December 1924 – 20 October 2013) was the First Lady of Yugoslavia as the wife of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. She was a lieutenant colonel in the Yugoslav People's Army. She was married to Tito from 1952 until his death in 1980. Following her husband's death, all of her property was seized and she moved to a state-owned villa, where she reportedly lived under virtual house arrest. Early life Jovanka Budisavljević was born on 7 December 1924, to an ethnic Serb family of Milica and Milan "Mićo" Budisavljević in Pećane near Udbina, in the historical Krbava and Lika regions of Croatia, at the time part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In April 1941, when World War II started in Yugoslavia, the Budisavljević family was forced to flee the violently anti-Serb Ustasha regime of the Independent State of Croatia, which targeted one third of the prečani Serbs for forced conversion to Catholicism, another third for expulsion and the final third for extermination. The family's house was eventually burned down by the Ustasha troops. She joined the Yugoslav Partisans shortly thereafter, at the age of 17. Life with and around Tito