Veljko Cubrliovic
Veljko
Cubrilovic appealed against his death sentence. He was wasting his time. He
waited for several weeks for the judgment of the High Court which rubber stamped
the death sentence.
Even though
Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic had not appealed against their death sentences,
the two men received a reprieve while the High Court deliberated on Veljko’s
appeal. For some reason the Austrians wanted to hang the three men together.
While he
awaited his fate Veljko exchanged several letters with his wife. He wrote a
letter to his daughter Nadja, who was an infant at the time, with the
instruction to his wife that Nadja receive the letter when she turned 15.
Veljko ended this very moving letter by telling his daughter, who grew up
without knowing her father, that in his last hours his thoughts were directed
at her and her mother.
Veljko’s
wife, Jovanka (who did not remarry after Veljko’s death and wore mourning
clothes for many years after her husband’s death), gave this letter to Nadja,
as her husband had wished, when Nada turned 15. Jovanka had never exactly
hidden the story of Veljko’s life from Nadja, but she became more open about it
as Nadja grew older.
In 2006, 92
year old Nadja would tell an interviewer, in Belgrade, that her father was a
Yugoslav hero and, even though she never knew him, she was immensely proud of
him.
Veljko was
hanged along with Danilo and Misko on 2 February 1915. On the last day of his
life Veljko wrote his final letter to Jovanka. There is a note of resignation
in this letter. He wrote: ‘Do not grieve too much and don’t be sad. It had to
be this way.’ As Veljko wrote this letter, a photograph of his wife and
daughter was in front of him, on the table.
The last
letters Veljko wrote to his wife and daughter got to them by a stroke of good
luck. The prison authorities sent these letters not to Jovanka, but to a judge
in the town Jovanka was living at the time (Bosanka Gradiska). The judge wrote
to the Austrian High Court that the letters be destroyed. In one of the letters
Veljko had written that he was leaving behind ‘untarnished name’. It was unacceptable,
the judge felt, that a child in a crib [Nadja] be told that a man who had
committed high treason and who was subsequently hanged was leaving an
‘untarnished name’! The High Court agreed with the judge’s recommendation and
the letters were destroyed. However, a high court clerk made copies of these
letters before destroying them. The copies were passed on to the director of a
bank in Sarajevo. The director handed the letters to Vaso Cubrilovic after the
war and Vaso passed them on to Jovanka.
The last
moment of Veljko’s life were described to Jovanka by a friend of Veljko from
Priboj, a priest, who was in the same prison.
Veljko left
some money for the guards to have a drink in his memory. As he was being given
the last rites on the platform, along with Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic,
Veljko asked the priest to tell his wife and daughter that he was thinking of
them at the end.
Veljko was
very co-operative with the executioner. When ordered to remove his coat, he
also removed the collar and tie so that the hangman would find it easier to fit
the noose around his neck. There was a fixed smile on his face all the time. As
the noose went round his neck, he said: ‘Long live the Serbian people! Long
live the Serbian army! Long live King Peter!’
The executioner,
Alois Seifried, an Austrian, left an account of the execution. According to
Seifried’s account the three prisoners’ chains were removed in their cells and
they walked unaided to the gallows, led by a priest who was reciting prayers.
All three
men were calm and looked composed. They listened quietly when the verdict was
read out.
The first
one to step forward was Veljko, As Veljko fumbled to unbutton his shirt and tie
so Seifried offered to help him. Veljko declined and said he would do it himself.
According to
Seifried, the second man, who was Misko Jovanovic, was also very calm.
The third
man, Danilo Ilic, Seifried wrote, had the greatest guilt written on his face,
but he too was serene.
One of the
men, Seifried could not remember which one afterwards, said to him, ‘please
don’t torment me for long.’
As the drums
were rolling the executioner heard all the men shouting. He recalled that all
three of them expressed themselves very strongly against Austria.
Seifried
completed his account by saying that he had never met such brave, calm delinquents in his life.
According to
Vaso Cubrilovic, both Veljko and Misko refused to say goodbye to Ilic on the
scaffold, presumably still holding a grudge against him for the betrayal. Vaso,
who would only be one of the two main accused who survived prison, could afford
to be magnanimous to Ilic in his memoirs. He wrote:
‘I don’t blame [Veljko and Misko] nor do I support
the fact that the late Veljko and Misko did not wish to say farewell to him [Ilic]
before their deaths.’ Vaso then turned philosophical. ‘ I
know,’ he continued, ‘from my own
experience that there are moments in life that require the utmost energy of
soul to remain in balance.’
Danilo Ilic
Austrians
decided to bury the bodies of the three hanged men secretly at night. The
Empire did not want the graves to become a point of pilgrimage. (The chief of
police wrote: ‘Their graves will be decorated with flowers every night as if
they were martyrs and heroes.’)
The burial
took place the following day, 3 February 1914. No one knew where the bodies
were buried until sometime later, when a landscape artist walking round the suburbs
of Sarajevo was told by a peasant that his (the peasant’s) son had watched city
policemen on the night of 3 February 1914 digging graves.
The artist
who was a professor at the Teacher’s Collage and had taught Danilo Iliac
painting when Ilic went to the Teacher’s School, immediately guessed that this
was the grave of the three hanged men.
The
authorities were informed about this after the Great War ended. By that time
the Austro-Hungarian Empire had disappeared. The bodies were recovered and
reburied in the cemetery in Sarajevo. Here they were eventually reunited at the
memorial for all the conspirators.
Misko Jovanovic
Mehmed Mehmedbasic
Mehmedbasic,
the only Muslim involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, escaped.
As seen in earlier postings Mehmedbasic escaped to Montenegro and from there
went to Belgrade. He joined the Komites and fought in the First World War. It
was while he was in the Komite that Mehmedbasic became close to Dragutin
Dimitrijevic (Apis).
Three years
later, in 1917, Apis was arrested, along with 10 others, on charges of
conspiracy to assassinate the Prince Regeant Alexander. As seen in an earlier post these were trumped up charges and the aim was to neutralize Alexander’s
enemies within the army.
One of the
11 men who stood trial was Mehmed Mehmedbasic. He was found guilty and was
sentenced to 15 years in prison.
One wonders
whether Mehmedbasic appreciated the irony of his situation. Three years earlier
(in 1914) he had avoided conviction for an assassination in which he was
directly involved (if caught he would most certainly have been hanged, as he
had a direct involvement and was over the age of 20), but now he was facing 15
years in prison for something which he did not do.
As it
happened, Mehmedbasic did not spend 15 years in prison. He spent only 2 years
and was released in 1919 after the First World War ended..
After his
release Mehmedbasic returned to Sarajevo. He was 31 and his CV boasted
involvements in two high profile assassinations—one genuine and one imaginary.
He obviously decided that he had had enough excitement and lived for the
remainder of his life quietly in Sarajevo, making a modest living as a gardener
and carpenter. Beyond this not much is known of Mehmedbasic’s life in Sarajevo.
In 1937 he was interviewed by the Italian historian Luigi Albertini about his
role in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
However,
fate had one final violent twist for Mehmedbasic. The exact circumstances of
his death are not known, but it is believed that the man who participated in
the assassination of a noble for his revolutionary ideas in 1914 was killed by
the Ustase fascists on 29 May 1943, probably because of his long standing Serb
sympathies. Mehmedbasic would have been 56 or 57 when he was murdered.
The Rest
Vaso Cubrilovic, Veljko’s younger brother, and Cvjetko Popovic were escorted from
Sarajevo in chains, and taken by train to the prison at Zenica, 70 kilometres
away from Sarajevo.
A second
group of prisoners, comprising the Kerovic father and son, Lazar Djukic, Ivo Kranjcevic and Jakov Milovic soon joined the teenage conspirators.
In December
1914, the prisoners were removed from this prison. Austria had declared war
against Serbia within a month of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and, after
initial success, the Empire was struggling. The Austrians became increasingly
nervous about keeping the prisoners on Bosnian territory and decided to remove
them.
Lazar Djukic
and Ivo Kranjcevic were sent to the prison in Theresienstadt (current day Czech
republic) while Vaso, Popovic, the Kerovic father and son, and Milovic were
sent to Mollersdorf near Vienna, and were immediately sent to solitary confinement.
The conditions in the prison were extremely harsh.
Gavro Princip,
Nedjo Cabrinovic, and Trifko Grabez were removed to a fortress in Terezin, North of
Theresienstadt in Bohemia (the former name for Czech Republic).
In the
initial months of the war, Austrians were prevailing against Serbia and a
prison guard told the prisoners of the Austrian successes. Gavro replied,
‘Serbia may be invaded but not conquered. Serbia will one day create
Yugoslavia, mother of all south Slavs.’ When the guard asked Gavro whether he
was sorry he was going to die in prison, Gavro waved his hand dismissively. The
guard then asked Gavro why had he killed a woman (the Archduchess)? Gavro
replied that he had no wish to kill a mother; it just happened. The bullet, he
said, does not always go where one wishes and the two (Ferdinand and Sophie)
were sitting close to each other. Gavro concluded that it was all Archduke’s
mistake as he wished to subjugate and destroy whole of his people and all the
Slavs.
The trio
were joined by Lazar Djukic and Ivo Kranjcevic. Kranjcevic was the only one who
got out alive.
All the
prisoners were subjected to considerable spite and physical violence. When they
became ill, they were denied proper treatment.
Except Vaso,
Popovic, and Kranjcevic who were young and in robust health, no one survived.
As the
winter of 1915 set in the health of the prisoners began to deteriorate.
Death of Nedjo
Cabrinovic
Nedjo Cabrinovic
Nedjo was
the first to die. He died within a year of imprisonment, of advanced
tuberculosis, hunger and exhaustion.
Nedjo Cabrinovic’s
family lived in Sarajevo and faced a calamitous situation following Nedjo’s
arrest. His father Vaso was arrested, and the rest of the family expelled from
Sarajevo. Their house and restaurant were ransacked by rioting anti-Serb mobs.
Nedjo’s mother gathered the rest of the family and took a train to Trebinje,
the home of her brother-in-law. Vaso had looked after his brother’s children
and paid for the education, so Nedjo’s mother had high hopes from the Trebnje
branch of Cabrinovics. However, the brother-in-law closed the door in
her face and told her that he did not want anything to do with her family. The
family was given shelter by a friend of Vaso until, three months later, the
police arrived and arrested all of them. The family was taken to an internment
camp where some of the children caught dysentery, and were removed. The family
never reunited.
Nedjo’s
mother died during the Great War. Vaso Cabrinovicreturned to Sarajevo and remarried. The
new wife was not kind to the children of the first wife and they dispersed.
Vaso Cabrinovic lived into his seventies, a bitter and unhappy man, frequently
talking of killing himself.
Dusan Cabrinovic,
Nedjo’s youngest brother was only four when Nedjo was arrested. Dusan carried on
living in Sarajevo until his death in the mid-1990s.
None of the
family ever saw Nedjo again, although the siblings remained proud of Nedjo.
Vukosava,
Nedjo’s favourite sister, learned from a young Austrian soldier, Franz Werfel, who went on to become a novelist in America, how her revolutionary anarchist brother met his end.
Werfel had
been posted in Terezin when he was invited by his corporal to ‘see something’
on the closed ward of hospital number 13 in the fortress town. That ‘something’
was Nedjo, who, by this time, was suffering from advanced tuberculosis. It was a
pathetic sight. His lymph glands were swollen. He was so weak and emaciated
that he could barely sit and could not keep his legs from shaking while he was
sitting. He was completely broken by cold, hunger, isolation and tuberculosis.
Werfel was
appalled to learn that the hospital doctor had deemed Nedjo fit enough to be
taken back to his cells. The doctors said they believed Nedjo posed a danger of
escape! The truth probably was the doctors had concluded that Nedjo’s condition
was beyond redemption and there was nothing they could do for him, not even
allowing him to die with dignity.
Years later
(in 1924) Werfel wrote an article about his only encounter with Nedjo Cabrinovic.
Werfel waxed lyrical in this article. He wrote:
‘I now detect a white, indescribably ethereal form
clinging with a phosphorescent hand to the iron bedstead. It seems to be
clothed in spectral white linen wound tightly around it. But it does not give
the impression of a shrouded skeleton—no, of a tremulous, pale vision, an insubstantial
hovering vapour in the air—as if a disembodied spirit was about to dissipate in
the unnatural yellow luminescence that filled the room.
‘Cabrinovic supporting his hand upon the bed, made
motions with his feet like those of a man trying to step into his slippers
standing up. His emaciated knees touched each other. His limbs trembled
violently as in some nervous crisis.’
Werfel noted
that the guards were rude and aggressive towards Nedjo while he, in striking
contrast, was serene and elegant, a figure (Werfel turning lyrical again)
almost saintly in his martyrdom.
(Werfel was
Jewish and later himself faced charges of high treason because of his outspoken
support of pacifism. He moved to Vienna where he met and fell in love with the
widow of composer Mahler, who left her second husband to be with Werfel. Werfel
was living in Vienna at the time of Anschluss.
He moved to California where he died in 1945 after a long career as a writer.)
Franz Werfel
Nedjo Cabrinovic
did not last long after the doctors sent him back to his cell. He lay in his
cell for a few more weeks and died on 27 January 1916. The police authorities
in Sarajevo later wrote to the prison authorities in Terezin, asking them to
exhume Nedjo’s body, cut off the head and send back the skull to Sarajevo. The
permission was not granted. Nedjo’s body remained intact when it was exhumed in
1920.
Nedjo was 20
at the time of his death.
Death of Jakov
Milovic
Milovic was
the next to die. He had never recovered from the beatings he had received. An
abscess the size of a fist had developed on his rib cage but he was denied
treatment and lay in his cold damp cell. He died in April 1916.
Death of Nedjo
Kerovic
A few days
after Milovic’s death Mitar’s son Nedjo, who was also denied treatment despite
complaining of severe stomach pain, died. In the end he could no longer sit up
or walk. At this stage he was removed to the infirmary where he died a week
later.
Nedjo
Kerovic was 30 when he died.
Death of Mitar
Kerovic
Mitar
Kerovic, Nedjo’s father, was 65 at the time of his imprisonment and suffered
terribly. He survived his son by a few months. He too developed severe stomach
complaints.
Mitar
Kerovic died in September 1916.
The Kerovic
father and son were poor peasants who got embroiled, most probably unwittingly,
in the conspiracy when, at the behest of veljko Cubrilovic, they provided gavro
and Trifko Grabez with transport (a cart!) to travel from Priboj to Tuzla. For
this, they paid with their lives.
Death of Trifko
Grabez
Trifko Grabez
By the time
the winter of 1916 arrived Trifko Grabez’s health began to deteriorate rapidly.
Like the rest of the conspirators he was denied access to proper treatment.
Eventually he was taken to a hospital when he had severe stomach pain, but was
returned to his cell the same day. He was found dead in his cell the next day.
Vaso Cubrilovic believed that Grabez took his own life. However, Kranjcevic,
who was in the same prison as Grabez had seen Grabez the day before he died.
Grabez was so exhausted he could neither eat nor sit up nor stand. To cheer
Grabez’s spirits Kranjcevic told him that he didn’t look too bad; that he
[Kranjcevic] too suffered from stomach complaints; and that hopefully they
would meet each other again if they could find a friendly guard. Grabez could
not answer. The next day he was found dead in his cell.
Kranjcevic
believed that Grabez died from general exhaustion and chronic starvation.
Grabez would have been 20 when he died.
Lazar Djukic
Djukic, who
had a peripheral involvement in the plot, suffered a mental breakdown in
prison. He was convinced he was being poisoned and began rambling incoherently.
He also began claiming that he had knowledge of an old plot to assassinate the
Emperor, Franz Joseph. The authorities took this seriously to begin with and
summoned Kranjcevic to confront Djukic. Kranjcevic recalled later that Djukic
was all skin and bones, and had a festering wound in his right eye which was
untreated.
Djukic was
eventually transferred to a psychiatric ward in Prague where he died in either
March or May of 1917. He was buried secretly and his grave has never been
found.
Djukic would
have been 21 when he died.
