Posted on 07/10/2014 10:27:57 AM PDT by Ravnagora
The German invaders occupied Sarajevo on April 15, 1941. Two days later, the local population looted and torched the Grand Synagogue. And on April 19, the local Germans (Volksdeutsche) removed a memorial plaque to Gavrilo Princip; it was sent to Hitler as a trophy and birthday gift.
In 1930, a memorial plaque was erected above the street corner where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, with the following inscription:
“At this historic place Gavrilo Princip heralded freedom on Vidov-Dan, June 15 [28] June 1914”
(Serbian: „На овом историјском мјесту, Гаврило Принцип навијести слободу, на Видов-дан 15 [28] јуна 1914“)
The removal of the plaque was marked by a special ceremony. A group of ethnic Germans, wearing white shirts and ties, were photographed and filmed marching in formation and carrying a banner to the assassination site. A German newsreel shows them carrying two ladders, used to climb to the plaque. Scaffolding has been erected underneath. Two German soldiers, part of a military band, stand with a bass drum and cymbals in front of the façade. The two Volksdeutsche remove the screws and dismantle the plaque, which they hand down to another man on the ladder. They then bring the plaque down. Two Volksdeutsche are photographed holding the plaque, as two Wehrmacht officers look on.
(Excerpt) Read more at generalmihailovich.com ...
Ping!
I visited Sarajevo, saw the spot where the assassination occurred, and visited the museum where they have the assassin’s clothes and gun, among other things, just last month.
What amazed me most was how little attention the Bosnians were paying to this momentous historical event. Their attention is still focused (understandably) on the war with the Serbs in the early 1990s.
That war was an existential crisis for Bosnia. Sarajevo was placed under siege, and the people had to live through incredibly harsh conditions, for four years! Even today, Serbs responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Bosnians, continue to live among them.
You can take the boy out of Austria, but you can’t take Austria out of the boy . . .
I visited Sarajevo during the Communist era. There was a plaque outside the museum (which was closed because of the time of day when I was there), but I’m sure it wasn’t in Cyrillic only like the one in the photo. They had put shoe prints in the sidewalk to show where Princip was standing when he fired the shots. I don’t know if the plaque or the prints survived the siege of 1992-1995.
Hi Verginius Rufus -
The rest of the essay contains another photograph - of the plaque that was put up in 1953 (during Tito’s era) alongside the footprints of Gavrilo Princip in the cement. That plaque/inscription is in the cyrillic (Serbian) language.
That plaque was demolished by the Bosnian Muslims in 1992.
Another plaque commemorating that spot in Sarajevo was put up to replace the one that the Muslims destroyed in 2004 which, as the author points out, was more “politically correct” according to the Bosnian Muslim agenda.
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In the Balkans, nobody is right or wrong, just Christians vs. Muslims.
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