American rapper Ice Cube tweeted a photo of Yugoslav hero Lepa Radic, 17, which was taken as she was about to be publicly hanged by the Nazis for refusing to reveal the names of the leaders of the Communist Party in 1943.
Radic was a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and was responsible for transporting the wounded to a shelter during the famous Battle on the Neretva river in 1943.
Eventually, the Germans captured her and took her to Bosanska Krupa where they tortured her for the next several days in an unsuccessful attempt to extract information from her. She was then sentenced to death.
“Long live the Communist Party, and the partisans! Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!” she shouted, with a noose around her neck.
The Germans then gave her one last chance to save her life by revealing the names of the Communist Party members in hiding, but she refused.
“I am not a traitor of my people. Those you are asking about will reveal themselves when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man,” were her final words.
In a report on the execution, the German soldiers described her as a “bandit” who had “shown unprecedented defiance.”
The photo was later found in the bag of the Nazi who hung her after he died in Zagreb.
Radic was declared a national hero in 1951.
— Ice Cube (@icecube) June 9, 2020
