Emina H. HAĆAM

EMINA MINA HAĆAM, daughter of HASAN, born in 1918 in Bratunac, a homemaker. She lived with her family in Mostar from 1937. A member of the League of Communist Youth (SKOJ) since 1941. As an illegal activist, she collected medical supplies and participated in a series of actions. Along with Ahmed Sefić, during the collapse of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, she smuggled weapons out of the fortress in the western camp, a chest full of bombs, and buried it in a shed in the yard on Promenade where the Haćam family lived. Later, they would transfer it to various bases. She was arrested with a group of girls during the first arrest of the female youth in Mostar when the Ustaše caught them in a meeting in Bare, precisely on the day of Germany’s attack on the USSR. They were held in prison for two months, beaten, but none of the girls admitted anything. They managed to escape from prison with the help of Marijan Pavelić, a communist who worked in the city police. From the beginning of 1942, she was in the Battalion, working as a nurse and teacher in the places where the Battalion stayed. When courier Mevzeta Kreso was delivering messages and mail to the fighters near Konjic, Mina Haćam gave her an apple for her mother with letters pricked by a needle, forming the message: “Dear Mom, don’t worry about me, I am fine…”. Captured with a group of fighters by the Chetniks during the Chetnik coup, but they managed to free themselves as the Ustaše started shooting in the meantime. Fighter Bera Arpadžić recalled, “Once, planes flew over Glavatičevo and bombed us. One comrade was hit by shrapnel: Mina, like a tigress, jumped to him and, despite the greatest danger to her own life, bandaged him under the bombs…”

She died at Sutjeska during the Fifth Offensive in 1943 while trying to help Šefik Obad: “At one moment, she jumped to bandage Šefik Obad’s wound. Comrades shouted to her, ‘Mina, you will die!’ That’s when she fell. Next to the hero Obad (…).” Her grave remained unmarked.

Mina Haćam is remembered as “a brave girl, an exceptionally dedicated illegal worker, and a courageous fighter of the Mostar Battalion.” Her brother is the national hero Mithad Haćam, who died in 1942.

As remembered by Angelina Draganić (Lambić):

At the beginning of the winter of 1942, our friend Mina Haćam from Mostar arrived in our battalion. I remember her arrival as if it happened yesterday. She arrived as a true girl from Mostar and brought with her a lot of wonderful clothes. One couldn’t tell what was more beautiful and precious, and she shared everything in just two days. I was just the shepherdess, and the kind of beautiful clothes she gave me I saw for the first time. Mina seemed gentle, but that first impression was deceiving. She was brave and resilient beyond comprehension. She was ready to jump in and help at any moment, and take on other people’s work. She went with the Battalion all the way to the Sutjeska (the Fifth offensive), where she stayed forever, while protecting the wounded. Witnesses say that she died bravely.