Italian Author, Holocaust Survivor Boris Pahor Dies at 108

Italian author Boris Pahor, who experienced the horror of Nazi camps in a life dedicated to the defence of minorities, died at the age of 108, local media reported on Monday.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella hailed Pahor as a "witness and victim of the horrors caused by war, by inflated nationalism and totalitarian ideologies".

In like manner, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini paid tribute to "a giant of the 20th century" who wrote about the dark periods of that time with "skill, lucidity and without pulling punches".

Pahor was best-known for "Necropolis" (1967), an autobiographical novel written after a visit to a Nazi camp where he had been held 20 years earlier.

The novel was translated into several languages as it evoked the brutality and horror of what the author witnessed in the camps and his guilt at surviving.

Born on August 26, 1913, in what is now Italy's northeastern coastal city of Trieste, Pahor was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 for his involvement with the anti-fascist Slovenian resistance.

When he was born, Trieste was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and home to a significant Slovenian community.

"Under Austria, the Slovenes were able to develop their culture. With Italy, we knew we were going to lose everything," he told AFP in an interview in 2009.

"I started to put my identity on paper, to write about my street, the sea, the quays. I conquered the town in Slovene," he said.