Part 4 - Remembering the Assassination: The First Hundred Years

            How does one commemorate an assassination? The story of Bosnian commemorations of the event which sparked the world war is as colorful and full of controversy as the assassination itself. (And, as you will see, the 100^th anniversary commemoration mirrors this ambivalence.)

For a full account of the first 100 years of commemoration WITH PICTURES, see: http://historyandthesockmerchant.blogspot.com/2010/12/commemorating-sarajevo-assassination-of.html   (Be sure to scroll down past the rather misleading heading at the top of the webpage.)

            Commemorations on that site in Sarajevo have ranged from the Austro-Hungarian “Monument to Murder,” placed at the site by the still-ruling imperial government on June 28, 1917 (exactly three years after the event) to the Tito-era glorification of the assassination as representing “a protest against tyranny and the centuries-old aspiration of our peoples for freedom” to the current neutral “on this place….” plaque. As you will see, all of these lines of thought – and more! – went into the rather bizarre events in Sarajevo on the 100^th anniversary of the assassination on June 28, 2014.