Original article (in Croatian) was published on 30/1/2026; Author: Ladislav Tomičić
The assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Gavrilo Princip, was born into a Serbian Orthodox family that celebrated Đurđevdan (St George’s Day) as its patron saint’s day (krsna slava).
On 26 January, a Facebook user posted a photograph of a monument to Gavrilo Princip splashed with red paint and accompanied it with a claim that the Sarajevo assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie was actually named “Gabriel,” that he was Jewish, and that he was a Zionist fanatic.
“Gabriel Princip, a Zionist gypsy from Bosnia and a shooter into the stomach of a pregnant woman. The man did not have a single millilitre of Serbian blood, he was 100 percent Jewish, a Zionist fanatic, who for religious reasons carried out a Kabbalistic ritual murder in Sarajevo. When Jews carry out ritual murders, those murders must be carried out by a Jew. Gabriel was a Jew, ill with tuberculosis, who for those reasons was designated to carry out the ritual murder. The organiser of the assassination was Leon Trotsky, who was in Sarajevo that day. The assassination was carried out by the Jewish Sanhedrin and Freemasonry, as the executive organ of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The goal of the assassination was to create the conditions for the First World War, the destruction of three Christian empires and the creation of the preconditions for the establishment of the state of Israel. The ritual sacrifice was first Prince Ferdinand, his wife and the unborn child.”
The claims about the Sarajevo assassin’s background do not correspond to historical facts.
Princip’s Family Background Is Well Documented
Gavrilo Princip – not “Gabriel” Princip – was born in the village of Obljaj near Grahovo to his mother Marija and father Petar, into a Serbian Orthodox family that celebrated Đurđevdan as its patron saint’s day.
Information about the Princip family is well documented. One of Gavrilo Princip’s relatives was Slobodan Princip Seljo, a Yugoslav revolutionary and national hero of the Second World War, whose father Jovo was Gavrilo Princip’s brother.
An article published in January 1940 in the Belgrade daily Politika, available through the Digital National Library of Serbia, reported on the death of Petar Princip, the assassin’s father. The article states:
“The Princips are originally from Grahovo in Montenegro, from where they moved to the Dalmatian village of Polača under Mount Dinara, and from there, during Turkish times, no later than the 18th century, as livestock breeders and farmers, they settled in Bosansko Grahovo, in Veliki and Mali Obljaj.”
There is no historical evidence indicating Jewish ancestry.
Although of Serbian origin, Princip stated during his trial that he considered himself a Yugoslav. As his motive for assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, he cited liberation from Austria and the unification of Yugoslavia. Historian Vladimir Dedijer writes extensively about this in his book Sarajevo 1914, quoting directly from the trial transcripts.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a political act. It was not ritual in nature, but a political assassination – one that would later become one of the most consequential acts of political violence in modern history.
No Evidence of Trotsky’s Involvement
The Facebook user also claims that Leon Trotsky organised the assassination and was present in Sarajevo on the day it was carried out.
At that time, however, Trotsky was living in Vienna. In multiple chapters of his 1930 memoir My Life, he writes that he lived in Vienna from 1907 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. There is no evidence that he was in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 or that he had any involvement in the assassination.
In conclusion, there is no evidence that Gavrilo Princip was Jewish, that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a ritual killing, or that Leon Trotsky organised the attack. For these reasons, the claim is false.
