Esed Ribić

Esed, son of Avdo, was born in Jezero in 1892. He finished primary school in Jezero in 1904, the gymnasium in Sarajevo, and then enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Vienna. In his second year, in 1916, he was mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian army and sent to the Russian front as a cugfirer (squad leader).

As his brother Rasim recounted, during one Russian assault Esed ordered his squad to unbuckle their belts and surrender the moment the first Russian soldier appeared above the trench — and so they came through without firing a shot. He spent four years as a prisoner of war and there witnessed the October Revolution.

On his return he briefly enrolled at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, then took a post as a senior customs official in Zagreb and Maribor. He helped his brother Rasim a great deal. He was a man of high education and morals: whenever he came to Jezero he would take off his hat and put on a fez, because most people in Jezero wore the fez then.

He never married. He was a passionate mountaineer — an edelweiss he picked on Mount Šator in 1932 is still kept. He died in 1942 at the Novi Marof sanatorium of tuberculosis, in his fiftieth year. He likely brought the ideas of the October Revolution to Jezero and Jajce. His nephew Enes wrote: »I am proud to have had such an uncle!«