Lejla Zjakić

All You Evildoers

This comic strip tells the story of the young Bosnian Serb partisan, Lepa Radić, who fell victim to the Nazis and was hanged in my hometown, Bosanska Krupa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in February 1943. Bosanska Krupa was at the time part of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy puppet regime operated by the Croat fascist Ustasha Ante Pavelić. It was established after the occupation of Yugoslavia, in April 1941. Yugoslav Partisans’ uprisings against the fascist regime were prominent in Bosanska Krupa and its region, Krajina, which was at the time populated by Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, Jews, Roma people, etc. 

The fascist regime aimed for ethnic cleansing, purifying nations, and eradicating all political opposition. Forced migration of an unprecedented scale went along with building concentration camps and mass executions throughout the territory of the NDH. Yugoslavia as a socialist country strongly resisted being occupied and being victimized, in a “heroic” attitude manifested through partisan movements and communist ideology. Lepa Radić for me still has this dual quality: she is both a “victim” and a “hero”. How can these two qualities co-exist? 

This project questions my complex relationship with my hometown and its war-torn past, and tackles the alienation from something that exists within oneself and in one’s closest environment. Through portraying the story of Lepa Radić, I want to strengthen that relationship and make it more tangible.