1942: Stjepan Filipovic, “death to fascism, freedom to the people!”
2 comments May 22nd, 2013 Headsman
On this date in 1942, this happened:
The young man striking the dramatic pose is Stjepan Filipovic, an anti-fascist partisan hanged in the city of Valjevo by the Serbian State Guard, a collaborationist force working with the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia.
Filipovic is shouting “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!” — a pre-existing Communist slogan that Filipovic’s martyrdom would help to popularize. Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu! … or you can just abbreviate it SFSN!
In the city where Filipovic died, which is in present-day Serbia, there’s a monumental statue in his honor replicating that Y-shaped pose — an artistically classic look just like our favorite Goya painting, poised between death and victory.
Filipovic was a Communist so we’re guessing that he would not have had a lot of truck with the ethnic particularism that’s latterly consumed the Balkans. Times being what they are, however, the national hero to Tito’s Yugoslavia has become a post-Communist nationalist football.
That Valjevo monument — it’s in Serbia, remember — calls him Stevan Filipovic, which is the Serbian variant of his given name. But as Serbia is the heir to Yugoslavia, he at least remains there a legitimate subject for a public memorial. Filipovic himself was Croatian, but his legacy in that present-day state is a bit more problematic: in his native town outside Dubrovnik, a statue that once commemorated Filipovic was torn down in 1991 by Croat nationalists; its vacant plinth still stands sadly in Opuzen. (Opuzen’s film festival, however, awards its honorees a statuette replicating the destroyed monument.)
On this day..
- 2002: Johnny Joe Martinez - 2020
- 1538: John Forest and the image of Saint Derfel Gadarn - 2019
- 1918: Edla Sofia Hjulgrén, Finnish parliamentarian - 2018
- 1889: Fulgence-Benjamin Geomay, at the Paris Exposition - 2017
- 1916: Four French soldiers of the 96 RI - 2016
- 1929: Nikolaus Karlovich von Meck, wrecker - 2015
- 1824: Antonio Brochetti, galley-dodger - 2014
- 1856: Casey and Cora, by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee - 2012
- 2001: Terrance Anthony James, snitch-killer - 2011
- 1393: The Muzaffarids, by Timur - 2010
- 1946: Karl Hermann Frank - 2009
- 1833: Midgegooroo, Noongar rebel - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Croatia,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,Famous Last Words,Guerrillas,Hanged,History,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,Serbia,Soldiers,Wartime Executions,Yugoslavia
Tags: 1940s, 1942, anti-fascists, communists, may 22, nationalism, partisans, photography, stevan filipovic, stjepan filipovic, valjevo, world war ii
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