description
Drawing on archival sources, journalism and other periodicals, private collections, oral testimonies, and scientific literature, the author analyses and presents the marked life stories of three revolutionary women: Pepca Kardelj, Zdenka Kidrič, and Andreana Družina. During the initial formation and the subsequent ambitious expansion of the national liberation movement in the occupied Slovene territory, the selected profiles operated in different positions and assumed military, political, and social functions at various levels of the partisan resistance and the struggle for liberation from the occupier‘s rule. After the end of the war, they were rewarded for their efforts with high-profile honours, prizes, merits, as well as social and political privileges. What they all have in common is the fact that, at the most critical moment in Slovenian national history, they chose to operate underground, from where they resisted the foreign invader with great effort and to the best of their abilities. This article aims to identify, in a comparative context, the similarities and differences in their personalities, life experiences, events, incidents, and important decisions and actions in the prewar and war period (1941-1945) in Slovenia, which influenced the overall shaping of their life paths or stories, filled with a great deal of individual sacrifice and suffering.