Necropolis

Boris Pahor spent the last fourteen months of World War II as a prisoner and medic in the Nazi camps at Bergen-Belsen, Harzungen, Dachau and Natzweiler- Struthof.

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.

Bearing comparison with the writing of Primo Levi and Imre Kertesz, Necropolis is a classic account of the Holocaust and a powerful act of remembrance.