Trifko Grabež

Trifko Grabež
Trifko Grabež, c.1910s
Born	28 June [O.S. 16 June] 1895 Pale, Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary
Died	21 October 1916 (aged 21) Terezín, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
Cause of death	Tuberculosis
Resting place	Saint Mark Cemetery, Sarajevo

Trifun "Trifko" Grabež (Serbian Cyrillic: Трифко Грабеж; 28 June [O.S. 16 June] 1895 – 21 October 1916) was a Bosnian Serb member of the organization the Black Hand involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

Trifko Grabež was born on 28 June [O.S. 16 June] 1895 in Pale, a small town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. His father Đorđe Grabež was a Serbian Orthodox priest. At the age of seventeen, Grabež was expelled from school for striking one of his teachers.

Grabež left home and moved to Belgrade, which was a part of the Kingdom of Serbia at the time. As well as continuing his education he joined the Black Hand secret society. For the next two years he spent most of his spare time with other nationalists who favoured a union between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

When it was announced that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austro-Hungarian Empire, was going to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 1914, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, the chief of the Intelligence Department in the Serbian Army and head of the Black Hand, sent seven men, Grabež, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Vaso Čubrilović, Cvjetko Popović, Danilo Ilić, Muhamed Mehmedbašić and Gavrilo Princip to Sarajevo to assassinate him.