Stjepan
Filipović (known as Stevan Filipović in Serbia) was an anti-fascist partisan
hanged in the city of Valjevo by the Serbian State Guard (Srpska Držana Straža or SDS), a Serbian collaborationist
force, during the German occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in WWII. He
was a metal worker born in Dalmatia who joined the communist party of
Yugoslavia in 1940. He was captured on 24 February 1942 by Axis forces and
hanged on 22 May 1942.
A famous
photograph shows him with a rope around his neck and with arms stretched in a
defiant V. Shortly before being executed he is said to have shouted “Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu!” (“Death to
fascism, freedom to the people!”) and to have urged his fellow Yugoslavs to
resist the occupying forces. On 14 December 1949 he was declared a “National
Hero of Yugoslavia” (“Narodni heroj”).
The large
monument “Stevan Filipović” dedicated to this courageous young man is located
on a hill near the town of Valjevo (second photograph from top). Another monument
to Stevan, which was erected in 1968 in Opuzen, the town of his birth in
Croatia, was taken down by Croatian Nationalists in 1991.
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