Igor Torkar

Igor Torkar was the pen name of Boris Fakin (13 October 1913 – 1 January 2004), a Slovenian writer, playwright, and poet best known for his literary descriptions of Communist repression in Yugoslavia after World War II.

Torkar was born in a Slovene family in the village of Kostanjevica na Krasu, then part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, now in Slovenia. He attended the Poljane Grammar School in Ljubljana. His teachers included the literary historian France Koblar, the writer Juš Kozak, and the painter Božidar Jakac.

In 1932, he enrolled in the University of Ljubljana, where he studied law for one year. Then he studied chemistry and graduated as chemistry engineer in 1942. He was a member of several left-wing student groups that advocated the autonomy of Slovenia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the democratization of the country. Among other things, he led a student association that successfully advocated the construction of a new university library building in Ljubljana.

During this time, he published his first short stories and essays under the pseudonym Igor Torkar in the literary journal Sodobnost. He also wrote political satires in the satirical magazine Pavliha, some of which were censored by the authorities of the Drava Banovina.

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he became an activist of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. He never joined the partisan resistance, but organized the collection of supplies for the fighting units of the Communist resistance. In 1942, he was arrested by the Italian occupation authorities, but was released after two months in prison. In 1943, he was arrested by the Nazi German occupation forces and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until the end of World War II.

After the war, Torkar returned to Yugoslavia, where he worked as a technical manager in a chemical industry complex in Slovenia. In April 1948, he was arrested by the Yugoslav Communist authorities on false charges of pro-Nazi activity during World War II. He was put on trial at the Dachau trials together with another 33 survivors from Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps who were accused of collaboration with the German Gestapo because, according to the prosecution, only collaboration could explain their survival. In 1949, he was sentenced to six years in prison, which was increased to 12 after the appeal. Torkar spent four years in prison (Goli Otok), including two years in solitary confinement. He was released in 1952, and was prohibited from publishing for two more years.

After two years of unemployment, Torkar became a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. In 1976, he rose to the position of professor of graphic technology. In 1971, the High Court of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia nullified the sentence from 1949, and Torkar was acquitted of all charges.

From the 1990s onward, Torkar became a critical commentator and observer of the democratization of Slovenia, with regular columns in the newspapers Delo and Dnevnik.