A Photo That Captured Anti-Fascist Defiance Until Death
There is regular daring, which is exceptional and badass in of itself. Then there is shouting defiance against tyranny and oppression while the oppressive tyrant’s noose is around one’s neck type of daring, which takes things to another level. Stjepan Filopivic managed to pull off the latter in WWII, when he shouted to a gathered crowd “Death to fascism! Freedom to the people!” with a Nazi noose around his neck. They were his last words on earth, just a split second before his execution.
Stjepan Filipovic was a Croatian, who was born in 1916 in what became Yugoslavia after WWI. He left home at sixteen and became a metalworker. In 1937, he joined the local workers’ movement and became an activist member. Arrested for political activity, Filipovic was sentenced to a year in jail. Imprisonment further radicalized him, and upon his release in 1940, Filipovic joined the Communist Party. In 1941, Germany invaded and overran Yugoslavia. Filipovic volunteered to join the partisan resistance against the Nazi occupiers, and was posted to a guerrilla unit near Valjevo, in today’s Serbia.
