Boris Pahor

Boris Pahor, OMRI (; 26 August 1913 – 30 May 2022) was a Slovene novelist from Trieste, Italy, who was best known for his heartfelt descriptions of life as a member of the Slovenian minority in pre–Second World War increasingly fascist Italy as well as a Nazi concentration camp survivor. In his novel ''Necropolis'' he visits the Natzweiler-Struthof camp twenty years after his relocation to Dachau. Following Dachau, he was relocated three more times: to Mittelbau-Dora, to Harzungen, and finally to Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated on 15 April 1945.

His success was not immediate; openly expressing his disapproval of communism in Yugoslavia, he was not acknowledged and was probably intentionally not recognized by his homeland until after Slovenia had gained its independence in 1991. His autobiographical novel ''Nekropola'', published in 1967, was first translated into English (in 1995) as ''Pilgrim Among the Shadows'', and secondly (in 2010) as ''Necropolis''. The novel has also been translated into several other languages.

Pahor was a prominent public figure in the Slovene minority in Italy, who were affected by Fascist Italianization. Although a member of the Slovene Partisans, he opposed Marxist communism. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government and the Cross of Honour for Science and Art by the Austrian government, and was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He refused the title of ''honorary citizen of the capital of Slovenia'' because he believed that the Slovene minority in Italy (1920–47) was not supported the way it ought to have been during the period of Fascist Italianization by right-wing or left-wing Slovenian political elites. Pahor was married to the author Radoslava Premrl (1921–2009) and wrote a book dedicated to her at the age of 99. In addition to Slovene and Italian, he was fluent in French. Following the death of Marco Feingold on 19 September 2019, he became the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust. Provided by Wikipedia