1940: Cayetano Redondo, former mayor of Madrid 1876: Four for the Mutiny on the Lennie

1942: Stjepan Filipovic, “death to fascism, freedom to the people!”

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.


(cc) image from Maduixa.

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..

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

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2 thoughts on “1942: Stjepan Filipovic, “death to fascism, freedom to the people!””

  1. Bekoda says:

    Izasla je knjiga STEVAN FILIPOVIC-ISTINA O ISTORIJSKOJ FOTOGRAFIJI ,Cigoja stampa, Beograd, 2012. u kojoj je opisan ceo zivot Stevana Filipovica i kako je otkriven pravi autor njegove cuvene fotografije. Cena knjige 600 dinara ) + ptt troskovi, za inostranstvo 1o Euro. Kontakt R.Davidovic, e-mail> radivojedavidovic5@gmail.com.

  2. Steve O'Rourke says:

    Another image of Filipovic graces the cover of Cry for Justice: Anthology of Great Social Protest Literature.

    http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Justice-Anthology-Protest-Literature/dp/1569800693/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369626469&sr=1-6&keywords=cry+for+justice

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