Boris Pahor

Who is Boris Pahor?

Boris Pahor is a writer internationally most notable for his Holocaust experience described in the novel Necropolis, told from the point of view of Nazi concentration camp survivor visiting Natzweiler-Struthof camp twenty years after he was sent from there back to Dachau, Mittelbau-Dora, Harzungen, and finally to Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated on 15 April 1945.

Pahor is prominent public figure of the Slovene minority in Italy who was affected by Fascist Italianization. Although member of Slovene Partisans, he has opposed Titoist Communism, as well. He has been awarded order of the Legion of Honour by the French government, the Cross of Honour for Science and Art by the Austrian government and been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, but refused the title of honorary citizen of the capital of Slovenia because the Slovene minority in Italy was not supported the way it should be during the period of Fascist Italianization neither by right-wing nor by left-wing Slovenian political elites. He was married to the author Radoslava Premrl and, at age 99, wrote a book dedicated to her.