Šefik O. OBAD, national hero

ŠEFIK OBAD, son of OMER, born on February 20, 1923, in Blagaj near Mostar. He completed elementary school in his hometown and then attended the Teacher Training School in Mostar. During his education, he joined the revolutionary youth movement, actively participating in its activities. He became a member of the League of Communist Youth (SKOJ) in 1939 and Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in 1941. He was also a football player for FC “Velež”. In March 1941, he was arrested for participating in demonstrations in Mostar. After the April War and the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, he left Mostar and returned to his hometown, where he engaged in organizing youth and preparing for the armed uprising.

In the fall of 1941, he returned to Mostar and continued his clandestine party work. He smuggled party propaganda materials and publications from the city to Blagaj, and in late October, he joined the partisans in the Konjic Partisan Battalion as a political commissar. In July 1942, he participated with a group of fighters from the Konjic Battalion in a successful attack on the gendarmerie barracks in Konjic, where they liberated their captured comrades.

In January 1943, he took part in the attack on Žepče with the Mostar Battalion. The fighters faced a difficult journey through deep snow and extremely low temperatures. The third company of the Mostar Battalion launched an assault on an armored wagon, where a platoon was stationed. Šefik and a group of bombers infiltrated the train, killed a number of Ustaše soldiers, and forced the enemy to surrender. During the attack on Prozor in February 1943, during the Fourth Enemy Offensive, Šefik and his company were among the first to enter the town, flank the enemy, and destroy an Italian machine gun nest. After crossing the Neretva River, he demonstrated bravery and resourcefulness in the most difficult battle of the Mostar Battalion at Porin.

During the Battle of Sutjeska, Šefik, together with his company commander Ahmet Pintul and two other fighters, launched an attack on a German position at Ploče during the night of June 11-12, 1943. They killed several German soldiers and seized weapons. On June 13, 1943, during the crossing of the Sutjeska River, Šefik’s Third Company stormed the German positions on Košuro under continuous machine gun fire. During this battle, Šefik infiltrated a machine gun nest and killed the gunner and his assistant but was killed by machine gun fire. On the same day, the legendary commander Sava Kovačević was also killed at Sutjeska.

Teacher Šefik Obad was proclaimed a People’s Hero on December 20, 1951.

Excerpts from literature:

“… And I recall Commissar Obad crawling with the first darkness and four comrades towards the very top of the slope and the machine gun nest that prevented us from moving forward, how in one leap he covered the German on guard, wrapped in a tent wing, with his body, and he silenced him without waking the sleeping machine gunners fifteen meters away, where soon after the bombs of the brave four exploded, bringing us a machine gun with ammunition.” (source: E. Ćemalović, Mensur Seferović, East and West)

“When we left Prozor, we also took the captured Italians with us. Along the right side of the road, we encountered groups of Italians hiding in the bushes. At our calls, they came down, terrified, and a new column of captives began to form, which increased to about 150 officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers by the village of Duge. Our fighters noticed one fugitive who was running through the forest, ignoring the calls to surrender. Several fighters tried to shoot him, but without success. The company’s commissar, Šefik Obad, ordered them to stop shooting, then he knelt down, aimed, and fired – and the fugitive fell. It was later discovered that he was an Ustasha gendarme. Obad was an exceptional marksman, rarely missing his target. He wore glasses, and the fighters would usually comment on his shooting, saying, ‘The four-eyed knocked someone down again.’”