Slovenian author and Nazi concentration camp survivor Boris Pahor died on May 30 at the age of 108. Pahor was best known for his novel Necropolis (1967). The autobiography chronicled his days in the concentration camp where he stayed for twenty years before the book’s publication.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who paid tribute to Pahor, praised the famous author as a “witness and victim of the horrors caused by war, inflated nationalism and totalitarian ideologies”. Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini also paid tribute by calling Pahor “a giant of the 20th century”, who did not hesitate to write about the dark times with “skill, clarity and without punches”.
Pahor was born on August 26, 1913, in Trieste, a northeastern coastal town in Italy, which was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Pahor and his relatives were all Slovenian minorities in Trieste. The city was annexed by Italy in 1918 after the Danube monarchy fell. In 1918, after the fall of the empire, Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy. However, he was a fascist and the minorities were oppressed under his rule, forcing Pahor’s father to earn a living as a street vendor. After being sent to Libya as a soldier of the Italian army in 1940, he obtained his secondary education diploma.
In 1943, during World War II, Pahor fought against the combined forces of Italian fascists and Nazis before being captured by the Domobracen militia in January 1944. He was then deported to Dachau concentration camp and four other camps. After surviving a 15-month detention in 5 different concentration camps, Pahor was released in April 1945. Pahor then visited Paris where he recovered from tuberculosis.
Pahor’s books Necropolis and A Difficult Spring (1978) were based on the events of the concentration camps and his time in Paris respectively. Pahor wrote many of his books between 1953 and 1975. He taught as a teacher at a Slovenian secondary school before retiring in 1975.
Boris Pahor has always spoken out against totalitarianism, fascism and dictatorship. The Holocaust chronicler has left behind a plethora of books that tell the stories of the atrocities faced by minorities in Italy and the rest of Europe during the Fascist and Nazi regimes. His books will never let generations to come forget the important events of history that are a shocking reminder of catastrophic human suffering.
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