Roundtable: Culture, Conflict, and Persecution on the Northeastern Border of Italy.
Joze Pirjevec (University of Primorska, Slovenia), Annie Cohen-Solal(New York University), Uri Cohen (Columbia University). Moderated by Michael Biggins (University of Washington Libraries).
The aftermath of World War One brought about a new geopolitical configuration, perceived as detrimental by most of the ethnic minorities that had made up the former Austro Hungarian Empire. In the cosmopolitan port city of Trieste, the ethnic Slovenes became the target of discrimination. With the advent of Fascism, those who resisted Italian efforts at assimilation were imprisoned, shot, sent to concentration camps.
In 1941 Boris Pahor, who later became one of the most prominent Slovene authors, was drafted in Mussolini’s army. He returned to Trieste in 1943, after the armistice, a city occupied by the Nazis. Pahor joined the Yugoslav resistance forces, was arrested in 1944 and sent to Dachau, Struthof, Harzungen and Bergen-Belsen. His memoir of his camp experiences, Necropolis, recently published in English by Dalkey Archive Press, will be the centerpiece of this event
