Ivana Hoffman was born on September 1, 1995, in the town of Emmerich am Rhein in West Germany to a German mother and an African father. When Ivana was 15 years old, she moved along with her mother to live in Dinsburg, where she contacted the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) to join the Youth Struggle Movement, where she held the position of media spokesman for the movement. She also organized events and rallies. In 2013, the young girl decided to travel to Turkey in order to participate in the demonstrations against the practices of the authoritarian Turkish regime.

The fight against Daesh

In 2014, when the threat of the Daesh (ISIS)terrorist organization was growing more, the young German girl made her decisive decision to travel to northeastern Syria without telling any of her friends and comrades, leaving them a farewell message which later spread to all international media, in which she said: 

“To my comrades, my party,

I can no longer distinguish the most beautiful of colours, I no longer feel the city breeze on my skin, and even the singing birds sound like a desperate call to freedom. I have made my decision. For days and nights on end I have lived with it, but today is the day I will take the step, with intent as strong as the current of the river Firat. I want to be a part of the revolution, I want to develop myself, in these 6 months I want to learn the struggle which unites all, and if necessary, give my life to defend the revolution. I know what awaits me, I know the importance of this struggle. I will face adversity and come to realise which capitalist instincts I still follow as a fight to suppress and overcome them. I will know how it feels to carry a weapon and fight for the revolution, against imperialism. I will experience a different life, more intense and more organised. Perhaps I will reach my limits and fall behind, but I will never give up my spirit to fight. I will carry on.”

Following her arrival, Martyr Ivana joined the Women’s Protection Units YPJ, which was fighting bravely the expansion of the terrorist organization Daesh, and had chosen a war name (Avashin Tekoshin Gunesh). Then she participated in many battles against Daesh after completing her military training.

The Martyrdom

After Daesh suffered two successive defeats in the Syrian towns of Tel Hamis and Tel Brak, the terrorist organization launched a big attack on the Assyrian village south of the Khabur River in the town of Tel Tamer which was under the control of the Syriac Military Council forces allied with YPG and YPJ , in order to control the village and cut the road between Ras al-Ain and al-Hasakah.  Hoffman was in that village with a group of her comrades when the attack began. The fighters valiantly defended the village and its Assyrian residents. The YPJ international volunteer, Ivana, fought until the last shot to prevent Daesh from committing a massacre against civilians of the Assyrian minority in the AL Khabour valley area.  She fell as a martyr at three o’clock in the morning on Saturday, 7 March 2015, one day before International Women’s Day, when she was 19 years old, to be the first international female martyr among the ranks of YPJ.

The body of Hoffman was handed over to her mother at the Nusaybin crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border, where solemn ceremonies were held in the city of Qamishli. Her mother tried to attend the funeral ceremony of her daughter in Qamishli, but Turkish authorities prevented her, so a similar ceremony was held in the Turkish city of Nusaybin. A remembrance ceremony was also held in Turkey’s city of Izmir, where 11 activists who attended the ceremony were jailed by Turkish police. Eventually, the body of the YPJ international volunteer, Ivana Hoffman, was transferred to Germany to be buried in her hometown, Densburg.