Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb, member of Young Bosnia. At the age of 19, he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Archduke wife in Sarajevo 28 June 1914. At his trial, he said he regretted the killing of the Duchess and meant to kill Potiorek, but was nonetheless proud of what he had done “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be freed from Austria.” The Black Hand was implicated in the assassination which led Austria-Hungary to issue a demarche to Serbia known as the July Ultimatum which led up to the outbreak of World War.
Many Serbs regard Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, as a pan-Slavic hero, with the shot he marking the death knell for centuries of foreign occupation over the various nations and faiths that would make up the Yugoslavia that emerged. To others he is a terrorist, a nationalist fanatic whose act triggered a war in which 10 million soldiers died and the world order was rewritten.
Depending on the circumstances, the angle of observation and the experience, the same person can be a hero or a terrorist. When I was a student in the former Yugoslavia, I learned that he was a hero.
When I read in Nicosia, what my younger child was preparing for graduation for the chosen work “Serbia in the First World War” in the American high school, I saw Gavrilo Princip as an idealist, a victim of different strategists who used his youth and libertarian ideas. At the time, I was severely tortured by high technology. Somehow I dealt with that parallel life. Then, in addition to all forms of abuse, I listened to all the terrible threats and consequences that my children will bear as their hostages if I seek asylum at the American embassy. It really didn’t even occur to me. I was there for my younger child to graduate. The moment I read during the day (torture and voices usually occurred at night) I heard a very clear male older voice: “I like what you read”. I was reading at that moment about Gavrilo Princip’s dreams.
After a trial in Sarajevo, Princip was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, the maximum penalty allowed for a person under the age of 20 on the day of his crime. Princip underwent amputation of an arm because of tuberculosis of the bone and died in a hospital near his prison. Princip met with a psychiatrist in the Austro-Hungarian army, four times. He wrote that Princip believed the World War was bound to happen, independent of his actions, and that he "cannot feel himself responsible for the catastrophe. Gavrilo Princip died on 28 April 1918, three years and ten months after the assassination. At the time of his death, weakened by malnutrition and disease, he weighed around 40 kilograms..
He also talked about his dreams, real dreams. Dreams of living in freedom, dreams of nature, the sun, dreams of love. He said:”I dream wonderful dreams, amazing…Thanks to them I survive. I would not survive without them…” It made me especially sad. For me, dreams have always been a particularly important part of my life. I thought I was even gifted with predictions through dreams. At that time, I did not register that my dreams were being programmed, don’t remember that at all. Now yes. I am sure. Almost regularly. I may have been sold by some side of the Mengele beast or mass exploration of programmed dreams in the time of Corona.
In Gavrilo Princip’s poem, these words are “Who wants to live let him die, whoever wants to die let him live”. My son said “Life is worth giving for freedom” but my son said of dreams quite differently: “I have passionate dreams, strange ones. I wake up and fall asleep again and continue where I left off. They are so intense that it’s hard for me to tell them apart from reality”. They programmed dreams for him in his country, his own people who pushed him not to live but to die. I am only now aware of everything and because of that I suffer a lot.
Whether the hero is, a terrorist or an idealist, I have vague feelings for Gavrilo Princip but even then and now I think – he could be my child. It’s been 100 years. One century. Today he would definitely be with the same idea as my son. He would show resistance to this morbid way of enslaving man. He would rise up against the monster. And here, the same ones my son fought against and lost his life, erected a monument to Gavrilo Princip in that park near our former apartment where he liked to walk his dog a Labrador Casper. The other day I passed by, stopped and said: ‘The world is uglier and your people are different than in the time of your ideals that shone in your eyes”
One should not be deceived by lies. Behind all our persecutions are only our governments. Other explanations are only the use of Pilate’s washing of the master’s hands and the use of shameless associates of the authorities in these heinous crimes. In dictatorial regimes, that story is as clear as day. Let the mark of shame remain on the UN, which does not react to these terrible tortures and murders…Yes, the project of torture and experimentation, according to what is happening to me and what I discover by researching other confessions is now mitigated and reduced mostly on dream programming. It’s not even the scariest thing they did to me, but I remember my dreams from my childhood. They were a real treasure of beauty and foresight…Let them be damned!
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