Necropolis (Slovenian Literature)

€œ[D]eserves a place alongside Primo Levi€s and Imre Kerte´sz€s masterpieces of Holocaust literature.€€"La Repubblica

Boris Pahor spent the last fourteen months of World War II as a prisoner and medic in the Nazi camps at Belsen, Harzungen, Dachau, and Natzweiler. His fellow prisoners comprised a veritable microcosm of Europe€"Italians, French, Russians, Dutch, Poles, Germans. Twenty years later, when he visits a camp in the Vosges Mountains that has been preserved as a historical monument, images of his experiences come back to him: corpses being carried to the ovens; emaciated prisoners in wooden clogs and ragged, zebra-striped uniforms, struggling up the steps of a quarry or standing at roll call in the cold rain; the infirmary, reeking of dysentery and death. Necropolis is Pahor€s stirring account of his attempts to provide medical aid to prisoners in the face of the utter brutality of the camps€"and of his coming to terms with the ineradicable guilt he feels, having survived when millions did not.