Lepa Svetozara Radić, a brave 17-year-old Yugoslav partisan executed by the Nazi Germans on February 8, 1943. Facing death, she displayed unwavering courage, refusing to betray her comrades.

Lepa Radić was a Bosnian Serb member of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia who was posthumously awarded the Order of the People’s Hero on December 20 1951, for her role in the resistance movement against the Axis powers—becoming the youngest recipient at the time.

With the noose around her neck, she cried out: “Long live the Communist Party, and partisans! Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!”

In her last moments at the scaffold, the Germans offered to spare her life, in return for the names of the Communist Party leaders and members in the shelter, but she refused their offer with the words: “I am not a traitor of my people. Those whom you are asking about will reveal themselves when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man.”

Lepa Radić was only 17 years old when she was publicly executed.