Youth

You will have me.

You will win.

I welcome you to take me.

I have won.

This mantra incessantly repeats itself in my mind. With each breath one of four sentences, in specific order, drives forth. No more words through my mouth. No more pain. Simply a mind with four thoughts propelled forever through me.

I lay here, where I’ve been alone for four years, chained to the wall of Theresienstadt Prison. At one time the chain held both of my wrists, but now it only holds one frail piece of skin and bone since my right arm was amputated because of the Tuberculosis.

I wasn’t always sick. Actually, I was quite healthy my whole life until June 1914. Then, in custody, I became sick.

You will have me.

You will win.

I welcome you to take me.

I have won.

My body no longer functions, although my mind continues to haunt. I sacrificed my physical self for national freedom. I killed a man and his wife for independence. I waste away to nothing while my dream is realized.

You will have me.

You will win.

I welcome you to take me.

I have won.

My physical form may die, but my purpose is strong. Even in youth I will have prevailed over an ancient empire. I rise to heaven knowing my path was true.

When history reads of me it will be of a man who freed his people from the reigns of imperial rule.

You will have me.

You will win.

I welcome you to take me.

I have won.

Gavrilo Princip died on April 28, 1918 in prison at age 23. Almost four years after he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, lighting the spark that set-off World War I, Princip was a broken man suffering from severe Tuberculosis. He’d already lost his right arm to the disease, which finally took his whole body. Had Princip been just a few months older when he committed the assassination, he would have been killed according to Austrian law. Yet, since he was under 20 years old at the time of the murder of the Archduke, he was sentenced to prison instead. In prison he was kept in solitary confinement until his death. His death, which changed nothing. His assassination, which led to the deaths of many millions from War, Famine, Disease set Yugoslavia free from Austrian rule, but also led to the breakup of his dream in the 1990’s. His death did not lead to a better future for his people, but simply a century of war for the region. His quiet death from a broken body in a solitary cell, chained to a damp and moldy wall was based on an act that precipitated the most destructive century in human history. His death was not worth his life, or that of all the lives lost because of his action. No one won from what Princip did. No one.