Vaso Čubrilović

Vaso Čubrilović, born on January fourteenth, nineteen ninety-seven, was a prominent Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb scholar and politician. His early involvement in the South Slav student movement, known as Young Bosnia, marked the beginning of a tumultuous life. As a teenager, he participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June twenty-eighth, nineteen fourteen, alongside his brother Veljko, who faced execution for his role in the plot.

Convicted of treason by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, Čubrilović received a sixteen-year prison sentence. However, he was released at the end of the war and pursued his studies in history at the universities of Zagreb and Belgrade. By nineteen thirty-seven, he was delivering lectures advocating for the expulsion of Albanians from Yugoslavia, a controversial stance that foreshadowed his later political career.

In nineteen thirty-nine, Čubrilović became a history professor at the University of Belgrade. His life took another turn during World War II when he was arrested by German forces and imprisoned in the Banjica concentration camp for much of the conflict. As the war neared its conclusion, he urged the Yugoslav authorities to expel ethnic minorities, particularly Germans and Hungarians, from the country.

After the war, Čubrilović served as a government minister, where he championed agricultural reforms in his role as Minister of Agriculture. In his later years, he distanced himself from the nationalist ideologies of his youth and expressed regret over his involvement in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. At the time of his passing, he was the last surviving participant in the conspiracy that had once defined his early life.