Organizer: Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka, Association of Anti-fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of the Town of Kastav
Conceived by: Matea Plišić
Exhibition curator: Marko Badurina
opening: 2 May 2025 at 11 a.m. at the Kastav Regional Museum Collection

The exhibition was organized to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Kastav and the Kastav Region from Fascist and Nazi occupation. It is dedicated to women who joined the People’s Liberation Struggle as early as 1941. Their wartime service was quite arduous – many were wounded, arrested, interned, interrogated and tortured, and they often lost their loved ones in the fighting.
In early 1942, anti-fascist women were active in virtually every district of the Croatian Littoral. Following the illegal activities of the Anti-Fascist Women’s Front committees (AFWF), the Kastav AFWF District Committee was established in the spring and expanded in August.
According to testimony available from the members of the People’s Liberation Struggle, most women were housewives or worked as housemaids. They learned about the movement from family members, mostly men – their brothers or husbands.
Regardless of their age, as the poet Drago Gervais put it, “they walked, they carried”. The women who joined the struggle mostly carried food, medical supplies, ammunition and other goods to the anti-fascist movement’s soldiers. Many of them lost their lives shortly after joining the struggle. Some awaited the end of the war free, while others were interned in camps, widowed, living in gutted homes, on the battlefields…
This exhibition is dedicated to them.