Minority Writer Boris Pahor Turns 95
One of the most important writers in the Slovenian language, Boris Pahor, will turn 95 on Tuesday. While the autobiography of the Trieste-based author will be launched on the occasion, celebrations, staged jointly by minority organisations from Austria and Italy, are getting underway on Monday.
Pahor is acclaimed in Europe above all for his works dealing with the horrors of WWII Nazi concentration camps, whereas Slovenians as well as the Slovenian minority in Italy - to which he belongs - also know him for his socially and politically committed activities.
"Nekropolis", a novel in which he remembers the internment at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, is probably his best known work.
Pahor was born to a Slovenian family in Trieste in 1913 and as a seven-year-old witnessed the fascist squads burning down the Slovenian Culture Centre in Trieste on 13 July 1920.
The persecution of Slovenians in the region made him join the liberation movement during WWII, he was however arrested in 1944 and sent to the Nazi camps Dachau, Natzweiler-Struthof and Bergen-Belsen. He recovered at the French sanatorium at Villers-sur-Marne to later become a professor at the restored Slovenian school in Trieste.
Editorial and political activities followed and were marked by his critical view of the dominant left-leaning currents in the Slovenian minority in Italy and the new Communist regime in Slovenia. Although left-leaning himself, he opposed Slovenian representation within Italian leftist parties, wanting an independent representation.
The final break with the Slovenian authorities came in 1975, when Pahor and his fellow-writer from Trieste Alojz Rebula published a book on the Slovenian Catholic poet and thinker Edvard Kocbek.
In an interview featured in the book, Kocbek spoke for the first time of the summary killings of suspected Slovenian Home Guard prisoners of war in 1945. The Yugoslav regime banned him from entering the state until 1981.
Pahor and his work only became subject to reevaluation after the democratisation and independence of Slovenia, which resulted in him winning the Preseren Award, the highest recognition for cultural achievements in Slovenia, and several nominations for the Nobel Prize.
Italy, which had also ignored him for a long time, honoured him with a high level award in 2003, while the wider Italian public discovered him after a newly translated version of "Nekropolis" came out in 2007. He is also highly acclaimed in France, which conferred on him the Legion of Honour in 2007.
Pahor persists in his critical stance, for instance in the polemics surrounding the Italian day of remembrance of post-WWII killings, where he reproaches Italy for forgetting about fascism, while also being critical of the Slovenian side.
The writer's autobiography will be launched in his presence by Studentska zalozba in Padna, Slovenian Istria, on Tuesday evening. A birthday ceremony, organised by several Slovenian minority organisations, will meanwhile be held this evening at the Regional Museum at Repen near Trieste.
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