August Cesarec

[3] As a high-school student he became involved in radical nationalist politics and joined the group that tried to assassinate Croatian ban (viceroy) Slavko Cuvaj in 1912.

[2] For his role in the failed assassination he received a prison sentence of two years, which he served in Sremska Mitrovica penitentiary[1] (in present-day Serbia).

[3] Cesarec was collaborating with the terrorist organization Crvena pravda to the extent of being there for Alija Alijagić the night before he was executed for assassinating the Yugoslav Minister of Internal Affairs.

[3] Cesarec had a significant body of work in literary magazines, over 200 articles in total, two collections of which were separately published in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

[3] He often argued for Marxist points of view, having redacted and prepared for print the Serbo-Croatian translation of Das Kapital made by Moše Pijade and Rodoljub Čolaković.

[3] Another one of the topics he was known for was arguing against the regressive nature of fascism and evaluating the work of Ante Starčević and Eugen Kvaternik as revolutionaries and against the clerical and Frankist (far-right) interpretations.

[3] In March 1941, a few days before the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, he was arrested and interned in Kerestinec prison in Croatia, together with some 90 leading members of the Croatian left-wing intelligentsia.

[2] On 9 July, the Ustasha had ten prisoners, including Božidar Adžija, Otokar Keršovani and Ognjen Prica, shot in retaliation for Partisan activities.

[3] Posthumously, his novels Careva kraljevina, Zlatni mladić and Bjegunci achieved the most acclaim, in addition to the short story Tonkina jedina ljubav.