This Teenage Girl Said No to the Nazis
Lepa Radić was only 17 when she was hanged
Lepa Radić (19 December 1925–11 February 1943) was the youngest recipient of the Order of the National Hero — the second-highest military award in the former Yugoslavia.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a Slavic country in Southeast Europe between Italy and Greece that existed from 1945 to 1992. It consisted of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, and was a melting pot of different cultures until it broke up in a civil war in the 1990s.
Our heroine Lepa Radić received a Yugoslav medal for bravery in 1951 — eight years after her death for the incredible courage and patriotism she showed in WW2.
But Lepa (or Beauty, as her name suggests) could have easily stayed alive in front of the gallows. When the German Nazis offered to spare her life if she identified communists among their captives, the girl responded:
“I’m not a traitor to my people. They will reveal themselves when they destroy villains like you!”
Her parents might as well have named her Stubborn.
And communists eventually would destroy the Nazi villains in the small Slavic country. However, the Germans captured Lepa a few years before the end…
