Slovenian writer 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 was a chronicle of his days in the concentration camp where he was kept for twenty years before the book’s publication.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid his tribute to Pahor, hailing the famous writer as a “witness and victim of the horrors caused by war, inflated nationalism and totalitarian ideologies”. Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini also paid tribute to Pahor, calling him “a giant of the 20th century”, who did not shy away from writing about dark times with “skill, clarity and without pulling the punches”.
Pahor was born on August 26, 1913, in the northeastern coastal city of Trieste, Italy, under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Pahor and its relatives were all Slovenian minorities in Trieste. The city was taken over by Italy after the fall of the Danubian Monarchy in 1918. Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy after the collapse of the Empire in 1918. However, he was a fascist and minorities were being oppressed under his rule, due to which Pahor’s father had to live as a street vendor. After enlisting in Libya as a soldier in the Italian Army in 1940, he received his secondary education degree.
in 1943, during World War II, Pahor fought against the combined forces of Italian fascists and Nazis before being captured by the Dombresen militia in January 1944. He was later sent to the Dachau concentration camp and four other camps. After surviving a 15-month long 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 concentration camps in Paris and the events of their time, respectively. Pahor wrote many of his books between 1953 and 1975. He taught as a schoolteacher at a Slovenian high school before retiring in 1975.
Boris Pahor has always spoken against totalitarianism, fascism and dictatorship. The Holocaust chronicler has left behind a plethora of books that tell the stories of atrocities on minorities in Italy and the rest of Europe during the Fascist and Nazi regimes. His books will never let future generations forget important events in history that remain as a shocking memory of devastating human suffering.
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