Background
Filipović was born on 27 January 1916 in Opuzen, in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, (in modern-day Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia), in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Filipović was born on 27 January 1916 in Opuzen, in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, (in modern-day Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia), in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War he lived in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kragujevac, Serbia, then both part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He joined the labourers" movement in 1937, but he was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to a year in prison. He later joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1940.
Filipović was commander of the Partisans" Tamnavsko-Kolubarski unit in Valjevo (modern-day Serbia) by 1941.
He was captured on 24 February 1942 by Axis forces and subsequently hanged in Valjevo on 27 May 1942, aged 26. He urged the Yugoslav people to resist and implored them to never cease resisting.
At this moment, a subsequently-famous photograph was taken from which a statue was cast. Filipović was declared a National Hero of Yugoslavia on 14 December 1949.
The town of Valjevo has a statue dedicated to him, "Stevan Filipović".