Stjepan Filipović

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Stjepan Filipović shortly before his execution by a unit of the Serbian State Guard . Recording by Slobodanka Vasić .

Stjepan Filipović  (born January 27,  1916  in  Opuzen , Austria-Hungary , † May 22,  1942  in  Valjevo ) was a  Yugoslav  communist  and  resistance fighter . Filipović was  executed during the  Second World War and posthumously declared a "People's Hero of Yugoslavia".

Life

Filipović was Croatian and was born the second of five children of Anton and Ivka Filipović from the Dalmatian town of Opuzen . Before the outbreak of World War II, he lived in  Mostar  and  Kragujevac .

In the  Kingdom of Yugoslavia , Filipović joined the labor movement in 1937 , was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to one year in prison. In 1940 he became a member of the  Communist Party of Yugoslavia .

After the Balkan campaign of the German Wehrmacht and the defeat of Yugoslavia in 1941, Filipović went to Serbia , led by a collaboration government, to support the communist uprising. Filipović was the commandant of the Tamnavsko-Kolubarski partisan unit in  Valjevo . On the night of December 23-24, 1941, he was arrested in Trbosilju by Chetniks loyal to the government . After being tortured , he was sent to a Serbian prison camp in Šabac .

Filipović was  sentenced to death  by  hanging  , the execution of which was scheduled for May 22, 1942. When the noose was put around his neck, he raised his arms and shouted: “Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu!” ( Death to fascism, freedom for the people! ) He appealed to the Yugoslavs to resist. At that moment a famous photograph was taken that served as the model for a  statue  .

Monument to Filipović on Mount Vidrak south of Valjevo ( Vojin Bakić , 1960)

Filipović was  declared the national hero of Yugoslavia on December 14, 1949  . The city of Valjevo dedicated a statue to him. In his hometown Opuzen, a monument erected in his honor was also erected in 1968, but it was destroyed in 1991.

Web links

Commons : Stjepan Filipović  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Ziyah Gafic: 1001 photographies qu'il faut avoir vues dans la vie; Quelques instants avant l'exécution . Ed .: Paul Lowe. Éditions Flammarion, Paris 2018, ISBN 978-2-08-142221-6 , pp. 333 (Original Edition : 1001 Photographs You Must See In Your Lifetime, Quintessence Editions , 2017).