Rajka Baković and Zdenka Baković were Croatian revolutionaries and members of the anti-fascist resistance movement. They were killed in Zagreb in the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941. Rajka was twenty-one years old, and Zdenka was twenty-four.

From the start of World War II, these Baković sisters had used their family newsstand in Zagreb as a key hub for connecting resistance members. They would leave packages or letters in order to arrange meetings, and the stand doubled as a supply point for the League of Communists of Croatia. Since Zdenka spoke German fluently and regularly ordered press in that language, it also quickly became a gathering place for German officers. It provided an ideal camouflage and a way to spy on the occupation forces. But the Baković sisters’ work did not go unnoticed. After one courier from the local committee of the League of Communists in Dalmatia was caught and tortured, he revealed where he had been taking the letters.

During the night of December 20, 1941, the Ustaša Surveillance Service (UNS) arrested Rajka and Zdenka and tortured them for five days. Despite the severe beatings they suffered, the sisters did not betray anyone. On December 24, 1941, Rajka was transported to a hospital. On December 25, Zdenka, in a moment of desperation after seeing that Rajka was not there, broke free from her guards and threw herself from the fourth floor of the UNS headquarters, where she died. Rajka died from her severe injuries on December 29, 1941. In postwar years, she was honored as a people’s hero of Yugoslavia.