Lepa Radic, was a 17-year-old Bosnian teenager who was executed for shooting at the Nazis during World War II.
World War II
On 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Axis powers established the Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosanska Gradiška and surrounding areas.
In November 1941, Lepa Radić and other family members were arrested by the Ustaše, but with the help of undercover partisan associates, Lepa and her sister Dara managed to escape from prison on 23 December 1941. Following her escape, she joined the 7th partisan company of the 2nd Krajiški Detachment.
In February 1943, Lepa Radić was responsible for transporting the wounded in the battle of Neretva to a shelter in Grmeč. During the fight against the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen she was captured and moved to Bosanska Krupa where, after torture for several days in an attempt to extract information, she was sentenced to death by hanging.
With the noose around her neck, she cried out: “Long live the Communist Party, and partisans! Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!” In her last moments at the scaffold, the Germans offered to spare her life, in return for the names of the Communist Party leaders and members in the shelter, but she refused their offer with the words: “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.”
Lepa Radić was only 17 years old when she was publicly executed.
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I would like this to be known, this girl deserves that her story be told, thus without filters, so that they can see that she was afraid of death, yes, but she was so brave that she preferred to be hanged before betraying her compatriots.
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