Veljko Cubrilovic
Veljko Cubrilovic was the ‘teacher
gentleman’ who helped Gavro and Grabez smuggle the weapons into Sarajevo, via
Tuzla, after the plotters had crossed the border between Serbia and Bosnia.One of the weapons would be used to assassinate Franz Ferdinand.
Veljko was the eldest of ten children.
His father was a successful merchant and had even travelled in Europe as a
tourist, a rarity in those days. Veljko’s was a cultured, middle-class family.
One of his aunts was the first qualified female doctor in Bosnia and
Hercegovina.
The family came originally from Tuzla.
After the death of his parents Veljko had the responsibility of supporting his younger siblings. One of them was Vaso, who would face trial, together
with Veljko, in 1914, for plotting to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
Veljko Cubrilovic was a qualified
teacher. In 1910 he moved to the town of Priboj with his wife, Jovanka, to take
up a teaching post. Jovanka was also a qualified teacher; the two had met at a
teachers’ conference and begun teaching at the same school in Tuzla.
Both Veljko and Jovanka were
politically conscious and Serb Nationalists to the core. They were outraged
when Austria annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina. In the year of the annexation
(1908) Jovanka, who was a couple of years older than Veljko, travelled to
Belgrade and tried to volunteer herself to assassinate the Emperor Franz
Joseph. The officers laughed her out of the room.
Veljko and Jovanka lived in Priboj for
four years. Their financial circumstances improved, which enabled Veljko to
support his younger siblings more effectively. He made frequent trips to Tuzla
where he helped develop a programme for implementing good standards of hygiene
in the primary school. In Priboj, outside of his school-work, Veljko began work
on an ethnographic study of Serbian folklore and traditions with a fellow
writer. (The work remained unfinished).
Veljko Cubrilovic got involved in the
plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand when he was sought out by Gavro and Grabezin Priboj. Gavro and Grabez had had to take a detour via Priboj after they
entered Bosina surreptitiously, carrying with them the weapons given to them by
Milan Ciganovic, a Komite officer.
Ciganovic had asked them to go to Tuzla where Misko Jovanovic, a ‘good Serb’,
would help them. However, the journey to Tuzla was long and arduous and the
peasants helping Gavro and Grabez to carry weapons suggested that they go to
Priboj first and look for Veljko Cubrilovic who, they thought, might be able to
help them. Veljko was known in the Serb community as an educated man of stature
who was also involved, for all outward appearances, in a Serb cultural group
called Sokol. He commanded respect of
Serbian peasants in the region.
All of the above suggests that Veljko
stumbled into the plot by accident. It was a set of chance circumstances that led the
plotters to Priboj and seek him out. Certainly he would maintain throughout the
trial that he had no idea of the plot until he ran into the peasants on that
morning in Priboj and was told that two ‘students’ who had travelled from
Belgrade wanted to see him.
Those who subscribe to the theory that
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a carefully planned and executed
conspiracy do not believe this, and maintain that Veljko was involved in the
plot right from the beginning via his connections with Narodna Odbrana, a Serb cultural organization for all outward
appearances but which was rumoured to have links with the dreaded Black Hand. The conspiracy theorists would say that Veljko did not run into
Gavro Princip and Trifko Grabez by chance; he was expecting them. He embraced his fate
knowingly.
Whatever the manner in which Veljko
was embroiled in the plot—by accident or design (on his part)—once he met Gavro
and Grabez, he did everything in his capacity to make the passage of the young
plotters easier. He also did not bat an eyelid when he came to know their
intention—either because he already was on it, or because he was the sort of
man who took everything in his stride.
In his trial Veljko told the court
that when he met the two ‘students’ he became suspicious and wondered aloud
whether they were carrying gunpowder, because he knew it was cheaper in Serbia
and often smuggled into Bosnia. He then said to Gavro, 'Please tell me they are
not for the Heir-Apparent because he is coming.’ Gavro then told him that the
weapons were indeed for the Heir-Apparent and apparently threatened Veljko and
his family with destruction if he did not keep quiet.
Veljko must have been very broad
minded, as, despite what many would have regarded as psychopathic threats by
Gavro, the two men got on very well. He accompanied them to the village of
Tobut and introduced them to the family of Mitar Kerovic (thereby sowing the
seeds of destruction of the Kerovics). He persuaded Mitar and his sons to
arrange a cart for Gavro and Grabez to take them to Tuzla. While they were at
Mitar Kerovic’s house, waiting for the cart to get ready, Veljko couldn’t
resist spilling the beans to Mitar about the weapons, and encouraged Gavro to
show and demonstrate to Mitar how the bombs worked.
Veljko was the only one who knew the
address of Misko Jovanovic in Tuzla, the man Gavro and Grabez were supposed to
contact. Veljko wasn’t sure that Misko would agree to help the plotters. So he
wrote a note to Misko, whom he knew, requesting him to help the ‘students’.
This does not look like the behaviour
of a man who was coerced into helping Gavro and Grabez. However, Veljko seemed
to have been aware of what he had let not only himself but also the family of
poor Mitar Kerovic into. Just before the plotters left for Tuzla, Veljko took
Mitar Kerovic’s sons aside and told them, so he would tell the trial later that
year, that they had fallen into great misfortune. The weapons the students were
carrying were for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The account
given by Blagoje, Mitar’s son (who stood the trial), was different. Veljko,
according to him, was pretty gung-ho: the students, Veljko is supposed to have said, were going to
shake up the Heir; they were ready to sacrifice their lives for ‘us Serbs’.
Blagoje was worried. He said to Veljko, ‘I hope you don’t ruin us with these
students.’ Veljko gave him the blithe assurance that everything would be
alright.
Veljko then returned to his cottage
and told his wife, Jovanka, who was not lacking in revolutionary zeal, what had
happened, and how he admired the ‘students’ and how he felt humbled by their
idealism. (Veljko, who was devoted to his wife, kept this conversation, secret
from everyone, which probably saved Jovanka. Years later Jovanka told their
only child, a daughter named Nada, about this conversation.)
It seemed, though, that Veljko could
not keep the good news to himself. A week after Gavro and Grabez left, Mitar
Kerovic met Veljko, and Veljko told him what Gavro and his bunch of idealists
were going to do, in case Mitar’s sons had not already told him. Mitar was
shocked. ‘Don’t worry,’ Veljko assured him, ‘if they do kill him, then they
will kill themselves and nobody will learn anything about it.’
None of the plotters killed himself
(although in case of some of them, Nedjo Cabrinovic, it was not for the want of trying). Veljko
Cubrilovic, as Mitar’s son Blagoje feared, had brought ruin on all of them.
Veljko Cubrilovic’s younger brother,
Vaso, was also involved in the plot. Vaso was recruited by Danilo Ilic a few
weeks before the assassination. It is not clear whether the two brothers were
aware of the other’s involvement in the conspiracy. Available evidence suggests
that they weren’t.
