On February 8th, 1943, Nazis hung 17-year-old Lepa Radić for being a Yugoslavian Partisan during World War II. When they asked her the names of her companions, she replied: “You will know them when they come to avenge me.”

On February 8th, 1943, Nazis hung 17-year-old Lepa Radić for being a Yugoslavian Partisan during World War II. When they asked her the names of her companions, she replied: “You will know them when they come to avenge me.”

In March 1968, a World War II film showing the hanging of a Yugoslavian partisan girl was found in the bag of a German soldier who died in Ilica, Turkey.
No one knew who this heroic girl was. Despite a persistent search, her name remained unknown. After the war, the "Museum of the Revolution" in Mostar (now the 'History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina) maintained possession of the film.
In March 1968, a World War II film showing the hanging of a Yugoslavian partisan girl was found in the bag of a German soldier who died in Ilica, Turkey.
No one knew who this heroic girl was. Despite a persistent search, her name remained unknown. After the war, the "Museum of the Revolution" in Mostar (now the 'History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina) maintained possession of the film.
One day, a soldier visited the museum. "That is my uncle's sister!" he exclaimed, almost in disbelief. That is how the name of partisan Lepa Radić came to light.
Lepa Svetozara Radić was born to a Bosnian Serb family on December 19, 1925, in the village of Gašnica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lepa was a hard-working, serious student. She read advanced literature, along with banned books she got from her uncle, Vladeta Radić. Vladeta, an electrician in the communist labor movement, significantly influenced Lepa’s core political beliefs.
In the act that would eventually propel Lepa into the history books, Hitler launched his assault against Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, to secure Germany’s Balkan flank for Operation Barbarossa, his ultimately cataclysmic invasion of the Soviet Union later that same year.
On April 10, 1941, the Axis powers established the Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosanska Gradiška and surrounding areas.
In July of 1941, Lepa’s father, Sveto, uncles Vladeta and Voja, and aunt Jovanka joined the partisans. After becoming a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, Lepa eventually joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that same year, at the age of 15.
Facing Nazi attacks on all fronts, Yugoslavia was quickly defeated and dismembered by the Axis powers.
While the Germans maintained tight control over the roads and towns, they did not control the remote, mountainous regions of war-torn Yugoslavia. In those towering mountains, Serbian resistance forces began to emerge from the rubble. This surge of resistance to the Axis was divided into two main groups: the Chetniks and the Partisans.
The Chetniks were led by former Yugoslav Army Colonel Dragoljub Mihailovic, who served under the Yugoslav royalist government in exile. The Chetniks were united in name only and comprised various sub-groups whose interests didn't always align. Some were fervently anti-German, while others, at times, cooperated with the invaders. But what virtually all Chetniks did manage to agree on was their nationalist desire to ensure the survival of the Serbian population and their loyalty to the old Yugoslav monarchy.
The Partisans were opposed to the Chetniks, as their group was fiercely communist. Their leader was Josip Broz, “Tito,” the head of the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, the Partisans’ overarching goal was to establish an independent socialist Yugoslav state by overthrowing the Axis powers.
The Partisans were opposed to the Chetniks, as their group was fiercely communist. Their leader was Josip Broz, “Tito,” the head of the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, the Partisans’ overarching goal was to establish an independent socialist Yugoslav state by overthrowing the Axis powers.

It was into this dense, tangled conflict that young Lepa threw herself when she joined the Partisans in December 1941.
Due to their dissident activities, the Radić family had been arrested in November 1941 by the Ustashe, the fascist Nazi-puppet government operating in Yugoslavia’s Independent State of Croatia. The Ustashe held the family at the Stara Gradiška prison. On December 23, 1941, undercover Partisans helped Lepa and her older sister Dara escape. Eventually, the entire family was released.
Just after Lepa’s sixteenth birthday, she and Dara officially joined the Partisan cause. Lepa courageously joined the 7th Partisan company of the 2nd Krajiski Detachment. She volunteered to serve on the front lines by transporting wounded soldiers on the battlefield and vulnerable civilians fleeing the Axis. But this brave work would lead to her downfall.
In July 1942, when the great battle for Kozara began, Lepa passed through the enemy line with one of the Partisan battalions and arrived at Podgrmec. Tragically, her father and two uncles were killed in that battle, and her only brother Milan, still a child, was captured and never returned.
Lepa remained, gathering young people and women during the day and fighting enemy strongholds at night.
In January 1943, during a period of especially fierce fighting, Lepa began evacuating civilians, the wounded, and the elderly while, at the same time, removing food and livestock from the area under attack. Then, on one fateful February night, Lepa walked through deep snow behind the Partisan brigades with more than one hundred evacuees seeking refuge.
Soon, German troops reached the frightened group's mountain shelter. Lepa fired all the ammunition she had, but it was not enough to protect her, let alone the helpless people in her care. She charged at the enemy and shouted: "Fight, people! Don't let yourself fall into the hands of the wicked! Let them kill me; my death will be avenged!"

During the fight against the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen under SS Brigadeführer August Schmidthuber, Lepa was captured and moved to Bosanska Krupa.
The SS sentenced her to death by hanging. For three days leading up to her execution, the Germans kept her in isolation and tortured her to extract information about the Communist Party and her Partisan comrades. She refused to divulge anything, both then and in the moments just before her execution.
On February 8, 1943, her captors brought Lepa to a hastily constructed gallows in full view of the public. The executioners forced her to stand on a large chest with her hands tied behind her.
With a thin, cord 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! They will kill me, but others will avenge me!"
In her last moments at the scaffold, the Germans again offered to spare her life in return for the names of Communist Party leaders and members. Still, she refused with the words: "I am not a traitor to 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."  When they asked her the names of her companions, she replied: "You will know them when they come to avenge me."
The chest beneath her was suddenly wrenched away, leaving Lepa suspended in the air. She was only 17 at the time of her public execution. The location of her grave is unknown, but remembrance stones honor her bravery and determination to resist and defeat tyranny in all its forms and at any cost. Yugoslavia awarded her the the military gallantry medal, Order of the People's Hero, in 1951.
On February 11, 1943, Brigadeführer Schmidthuber received an "executions report," stating: "A bandit hanged in Bosanska Krupa showed an unprecedented incarnation." During the security warfare in Kosovo, Schmidthuber issued more orders to kill prisoners and burn villages. Convicted of war crimes in Yugoslavia, he was executed in Belgrade on February 19, 1947, at age 45.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO