Davorjanka Paunović

Davorjanka Paunović Zdenka (19 January 1921 – 1 May 1946) was a student, participant in the Yugoslav liberation struggle and Josip Broz Tito's mistress.

She joined the youth revolutionary movement and became a member of SKOJ as a high school student in 1936 and continued her political activities as part of various political and revolutionary groups in Požarevac and Belgrade, where she studied French and literature at the University of Philosophy. Before the start of World War II, in 1941, she became the courier for the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the KPJ. She acted as Josip Broz Tito's personal secretary and was part of various marches and offensives across occupied and liberated territories.

During the war she fell ill with tuberculosis, and in the summer of 1944 went to Moscow, Soviet Union for treatment. Upon her return to Yugoslavia she lived with Tito at Rumunjska 5 and Beli dvor, where she worked as his secretary. At the start of 1946 she became ill again and received treatment at Golnik, in Slovenia, where she died on 1 May 1946. She is buried at the Castle complex near Beli dvor, Serbia.

Davorjanka Paunović is considered one of the greatest loves of Josip Broz Tito, with whom she lived a full five years.