Lepa Radić, heroic Communist Yugoslavian anti-fascist partisan and resistance fighter was born December 19, 1925.
After the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, Radić, a Communist, joined the partisans to fight them at the age of 15. Imprisoned in November, 1941 she escaped captivity with her sister.
In February, 1943 at the age of 17 she was captured while fighting during the Battle of the Neretva. Subjected to brutal torture she refused to cooperate with her captors. The Nazis publicly hung her on February 8th.
As they placed 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!"
Her executioners gave her one final chance to betray her comrades saying they would spare her life to which she responded: "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."
In 1951 she was posthumously awarded the Yugoslavian Order of the People's Hero by the communist state she had fought and died to help create.
She is a global hero in the fight against fascism.
Monument to her Bistrica memorial park, Serbia
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