Lepa Radić (1925 - 1943)

Sat Dec 19, 1925

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Lepa Radić, born on this day in 1925, was a teenage communist executed by the SS after refusing to turn over information, shouting from the gallows “Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!”

Under the influence of her uncle, a labor organizer, Radić joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia at the age of 15. The same year, Radić and her family were arrested by the Ustaše, Nazi collaborators, however they escaped with the help of undercover partisan associates. Following this, she joined the 7th partisan company of the 2nd Krajiški Detachmen.

During a fight against the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen”, Radić was captured and sentenced to death by hanging after being tortured for several days in an attempt to extract information. She refused her interrogators, stating “I am not a traitor of my people. Those whom you are asking about will reveal themselves when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man.”

Radić was posthumously awarded the “Order of the People’s Hero” in 1951, the youngest recipient at the time at seventeen years of age.