Irma Benčić was a native of Istria Province, part of modern-day Croatia; during Irma's lifetime, the province was part of Yugoslavia. When Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1940, a resistance movement, later widely referred to as the NOP (), was formed in Istria to oppose the German occupiers of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral. Benčić joined the partisans during the conflict, actively resisting against the Germans. She was killed by the German army on the night of 1 March 1945 in Novigrad, two months before the city was liberated by the advancing Yugoslav army.