08/02/2024
sfsn!
On this day, 8 February 1943, Lepa Svetozara Radic, a 17-year-old anti-N**i partisan from Bosnia-Herzegovina (former Yugoslavia) was captured by the Germans during World War II.
Along with her sister Dara, she fought in the 7th partisan company of the 2nd Krajina detachment, and on February 8, was attempting to help refugees, mostly women and children, escape the N**i 369th and 7th SS Division. Surrounded during a fierce battle, she used up all of her ammunition, then called on her comrades to fight with their bare hands, until she was overpowered by blows from German rifle butts.
She was to be hanged, but as the noose was tied around her neck her captors offered her her life if she gave up the names of her comrades, but she responded that she was not a traitor and her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death.
By February 11, a German SS officer named Schmidthuber received a report stating: "A bandit hanged in Bosanska Krupa showed an unprecedented incarnation" (meaning "defiance").
Her prophecy was most likely fulfilled as Yugoslavia was eventually liberated by the resistance, and this photograph was later found on the body of the German soldier who took it. Furthermore, Schmidthuber was convicted of war crimes and executed in Belgrade in 1947.
Learn more about resistance to N**ism in our podcast episodes 63, 64, and 72. Available wherever you get your podcasts or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/
