Sidika H. BUČUK-HADŽIĆ 

SIDIKA DIKA BUČUK, daughter of HASAN, born on December 16, 1920, in Carina, Mostar. One of the four children of the merchant Hasan and Munta, born Bajgorić, sister of Mehmed (1922), Zarifa (1931), and Nusreta (1933). Homemaker. Activist, illegal, and active participant in the People’s Liberation War (NOP). Her mother died in 1936, so Sidika took on the responsibility of taking care of the household, father, brother, and sisters. She was in love with the communist Mustafa Husković, who died at the beginning of the war. After that, Sidika devoted herself even more to the National Liberation Movement. She participated in women’s demonstrations against hunger in Mostar in 1941 and, until her arrest, distributed messages, communist literature, and illegal materials. When the risk of exposure increased, she hid for a while with Hajrija Bašagić and Fahira Ćišić. She married the underground fighter Mahmut Bučuk and changed her address and surname. However, the Ustasha arrested her, as well as her husband Mahmut and Fahira Ćišić, in March 1944. Dika spent about six months in Mostar prison at Vladičina Kuća near the Orthodox Church. She was tortured but did not betray anyone. She was taken to the Stara Gradiška concentration camp where she was killed. Sidika was pregnant at the time of her arrest. After the war, she was often referred to as “our Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya” (the Soviet WWII heroine).

Excerpt from the book “Mostarke” by Mahmut Konjhodžić:

“Prior to the war, a great love was born between Dika and the young communist Mustafa Husković. However, Mustafa died early in the uprising somewhere near Nevesinje, where the Regional Committee of the Party, along with Mahmud Đikić, had sent him to establish a connection with the insurgents. After Mustafa’s death, Dika worked even harder and more selflessly. There was no meeting where she did not speak, where she did not bring something to read. There was no woman in the neighborhood with whom she did not talk about the struggle, whom she did not personally know and visit in her political work. This young woman gathered her neighbors, told them tirelessly about the partisans, and read various materials. She was the first to publicly speak out during large demonstrations against the high cost of living in the fall and winter of 1943. She was the first to shout in protest: ‘My children are hungry…’ and her own little sisters were hungry, for whom she was both a sister and a mother. She was quiet, withdrawn, a very intelligent girl. She was constantly on the move. She had several changes of clothes that she would wear. She had to perform all this extensive work without her strict father noticing, as she also had to cook and clean for him, taking care of the cleanliness of the house and her sisters. Dika was responsible for everything for her father. However, her sisters also helped Dika both at home and in her illegal work. They would secretly listen when women came to Dika’s house to read something, and they also asked for books. Although they were thirteen and ten years old, they received… ‘Mother’ by Gorky, which made them happy. (…) The police burst in… They were civilian agents – Ustasha in white coats with hats on their heads. Each of them had a flashlight in their hand. They searched every corner. They first grabbed Dika, tied her hands, and put her in the toilet, then locked it. To make matters worse, she was pregnant. Since they found nothing in the house, the Ustasha agents then put Dika, bound, into the ‘black van,’ the notorious police van, and drove her to prison. Fahira and Dika’s husband Mahmut were taken on foot to the same prison in Vladičina Kuća, near the Orthodox Church where the German commander of Herzegovina and the Gestapo resided. Dika, that brave woman who was not afraid to run through the city full of bullets or ammunition and who fearlessly carried out illegal tasks, did not lose hope in prison. Her sisters Zarifa and Nusreta received her bloody laundry from prison, and the word spread about how bravely the young woman was holding up. It was known when the policemen would walk her through the hallway because she would shout as loud as her voice would carry: ‘I don’t know anything!’ She wanted all the prisoners to hear that she hadn’t betrayed anyone or anything. At that time, several people from Mostar were arrested. The Ustasha and Gestapo tortured Dika for a full six months, but she never uttered a word. They later sent her to the Stara Gradiška camp. Postcards arrived from her, and her sisters sent her food packages. But her correspondence suddenly stopped. Dika was killed. And the child inside her, who was soon to be born. Her husband never returned either. Fahira Ćišić was also killed in the camp. The women to whom Dika had visited illegally returned two headscarves and five changes of clothes that Dika had left with them so that when she left their houses, she could disguise herself as if one woman had entered and another had left.”

* According to family biography. In “Spomenica Mostara”, her date of birth is listed as February 6, 1919.