User:Ana Bošnjak/Radojka Lakić

Radojka Lakić born in Skender-Vakuf in 1917 was a participant in the National liberation struggle and  national hero of Yugoslavia.

Biography
Born on 12 October 1917 in Skender-Vakuf (today Kneževo). Her father Đorđe, was a teacher, and because of his job he often moved with his family. In her childhood, Radojka had lived in many places of what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina. She attended primary school in a village named Skočići, near Zvornik and Tuzla. From there, her parents moved to Bijeljina where she attended six grades of a classic-programme school. Because the higher grades were temporarily abolished after the Bijeljina classic-programme school incident, which happened in October 1934, Radojka attended the seventh grade in Sarajevo, and she attended the eighth grade and high school graduation exam in Šabac. In September 1936, she enrolled to Faculty of Technology in Belgrade, and then she moved to Faculty of Philosophy. While she was still a student of the Bijeljina classic-programme school she joined to a revolutionary youth movement and she became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia.

After her arrival at University of Belgrade, she continued to be politically active within the frame of the student revolutionary movement and its various organizations.In 1937, she was admitted to the membership in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. During vacation, she went to Bijeljina and Sarajevo, where she was also politically active. In the period of her studying she was in hard material status, and because of the misunderstanding of her parents for her revolutionary work, she refused to receive their material support and in December 1940 she worked as a day labourer in a post in Belgrade. After the April Invasion and the occupation of Yugoslavia, by the end of May 1941, she left the occupied Belgrade and went to Bijeljina, to her parents. Because organized operations of arresting Communists began in June, after the attack of Germany to Soviet Union, Radojka had, following the command of the Party, to escape to be arrested, gone to Sarajevo. Immediately at the arrival to Sarajevo, she devoted herself to illegal party work and she was engaged in the preparations for a rebellion. After the arresting of the leading Comunists of Sarajevo by the police of the ustaše, Radojka took over the function of the party cell secretary at Baščaršija and in the most difficult conditions she continued with illegal work. She would dress up as a Muslim woman, she would often changed apartments in which she lived and she lived under a pseudonym. During her stay in Sarajevo she had led sanitary courses organized by a Local committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, where Radojka had been a member and she completed the radio station handling training together with Mira Kurilić, Nihad Kulenović and Zehra Muidović. The training was held in Zehra Muidović's apartment at Veliki Alifakovac where she lived.

At the beginning of September 1941, dressed in a Muslim ethnological clothes with an ID document adressed on the name Marija Hodak, she happened to meet police agents who searched her in the street. During the search they found decrees of the Communist party of Yugoslavia about raising rebellion and the copied excerpts of the History of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. After she was arrested, she was taken to the ustaša prison, where she was subject to torture. Because she had not admit anything, she was lead to the martial law in move. She was imprisoned at the same time as Vjera Kušec, Iso Jovanović, Vaso Miskin, Nisim Albahari and Mile Đurašković were, who all managed to escape from prison in one escape, while Vjera Kušec was later released from prison in the exchange of the prisoners. She was sentenced to death and shot on 28 or 29 September 1941 at Vraca in Sarajevo. She is buried in the Tomb of national heroes in the memorial park Vraca, near Sarajevo, and a commemorative plaque is put at the place where she was executed. By the decree of the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), on 8 June 1945, she was proclaimed a national hero among the first fighters of the People's Liberation Army.