Rade Končar

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Rade Končar (Serbian Cyrillic: Раде Кончар) (October 28, 1911 – May 22nd, 1942) was a Yugoslav Communist leader and legendary World War II resistance fighter.

Rade Končar was born in the village of Končarev Kraj near the Plitvice Lakes, Austria-Hungary (now Croatia), to an ethnic Serb family. After finishing primary school, he left his home for Serbia in order to school himself to become a machinist.

In 1934, Končar became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. He got a job in the Belgrade power company. In 1936 he was arrested by the Royal police and sentenced to one year in prison for his communist activity. After serving his sentence he went to Zagreb where he took a job in the local workshop of Siemens AG. There he organised a Party cell and led a strike. Because of that he quickly rose in Party ranks. In 1938 he became a member of the Zagreb local Party committee, and in 1939 he became the general secretary of the Croatian Communist Party. One year later he became a member of the Politburo of CPY.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, he was working on preparations for an armed uprising against the occupation forces and their collaborators. In September 1941 he took part in conference with other Partisan leaders in Stolice. After that he came to Split where he organised resistance movement against the Italian occupation force. His efforts resulted in series of spectacular actions against Italian soldiers, local Fascists and collaborators, most notable being grenade attack on Italian military band. In his dispatches to Party leadership Končar bragged about causing "such panic among Italians, that 200 armed men could have liberated Split without shots being fired".

On November 17th, 1941, Končar was arrested by the Italian OVRA. Despite being tortured, he refused to give his name and the Italian authorities established his identity only after obtaining old Royal Yugoslav files from the Ustasha secret police in Zagreb. Končar stood trial at a special Italian military tribunal and received the death sentence. Asked whether he would ask for clemency, he said "I will not ask for mercy nor would I have it on you!". He was shot in Šibenik together with 25 other anti-fascists.

Rade Končar quickly became one of the greatest Partisan icons. In August 1942 he was among the first to receive title of People's Hero of Yugoslavia. Few months later, in December 1942, the 13th Proletarian Brigade of the National Liberation Army was named after him.

Končar, an electronical equipment company in Zagreb that exists to this day, was named after him. The Electrical Engineering Highschool "Rade Končar" in Belgrade is also named after him.

In the Croatian version of the 2005 animated film Robots, the character of Rodney Copperbottom is named Ratko Končar, as a reference to Rade Končar.

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