Fortress of Arad their honor. The most famous prisoner in the fortress of Arad was undoubtedly Gavrilo Princip, who on 28 June 1914 killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, which led to the outbreak of World War I. About the inhuman conditions in which prisoners were held in the fortress of Arad warned Ştefan Cicio Pop, deputy of the Romanian National Party in an interpellation to the Hungarian parliament in Budapest during 1917. After the first World War, the fortress was occupied by allied Serbian and French troops under French command, until
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria with more than 70,000 other Viennese. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned for three months. The conditions in the camp ruined his health permanently. Joseph Ferdinand was released and lived an isolated existence thereafter, under continual observation by the Gestapo. He died on 28 August 1942 in Vienna. Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria (24 May 1872 – 28 August 1942) was an Austro-Hungarian Archduke and the titular Grand Duke of Tuscany from 17 January 1908 to 2 May 1921, military commander, from 1916 Generaloberst, and