[1] Rajka Baković was born on September 2, 1920, in the Bolivian mining town of Oruro to a wealthy family of emigrants from the Croatian island of Brač.

[2] After finishing elementary school in Brač, Rajka's family moved to the Croatian capital of Zagreb, where her father bought a three-story building at 25 Gundulićeva Street.

Rajka started showing her left-wing (leftist) orientation during high school by joining the Youth of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1938.

[4][5] From the start of the war, the Baković family newsstand was a central hub for the connection of members of the Zagreb resistance movement.

They would leave letters or packages to arrange meetings, and it was a place of supply for the League of Communists of Croatia, where Jerko worked.

[6] In the evening of December 20, 1941, agents of the Ustasha Surveillance Service (Croatian: Ustaška nadzorna služba; UNS) broke into the Baković family apartment on Gundulićeva street, searched it, and eventually arrested Zdenka, Rajka and Mladen.

Hana Pavelić, a resistance movement member who was responsible for a connection between the League of Communists and the newsstand, noticed that something was wrong in Zdenka and Rajka's behavior so she informed others.

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 on Zvonimirova street, where she died.

"[8] Rajka and Zdenka, known as Sisters Baković, along with Anka Butorac, Ljubica Gerovac, Nada Dimić, Dragica Končar, and Nera Šafarić, were memorialized from 1997 to 2001 by Sanja Iveković's Gen XX project.