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| © Manca Juvan |
Most of all she was proposing a social act of remembrance: "We keep the identification number of his internment. Is there a possibility to write his name on the memorial in Gonars? The history forgot him." I didn't have the answer to Ms. Pahor's request but I was experiencing pain and suffering contained in the memory about her grandfather.I remember our phone conversation beginning with: "My grandmother never got back the body of my grandfather." With this words a grandchild Marjana Pahor set the content and the flow of a conversation.
"He dug Teleskop with his hands. Pirnat (Niko) and Magajna (Bogomir) told it," Ms. Pahor began a string of second- or firsthand collected memories mentioning two representatives of Slovene cultural elite at the time. According to what she was told her grandfather was connected with a group of internees who dug an underground tunnel and escaped the camp. The escape was named Teleskop. "I am not asking for his name to be written down because he is my grandfather. I am talking about a person who was a friend of Srečko Kosovel, a person who supported the culture." She enforced the statement by revealing that Riko Debenjak, a Slovene painter and printmaker was her grandfather's friend. He became his son's Sergej Pahor godfather. When the family lost a father, Debenjak supported the education of Angel's sons. One became a journalist, the other a scientist and a professor of quantum physics.
In Pahor family Italian fascist camps were not a topic of a conversation. Internment was a later stage in Ms. Pahor's family experience of fascism.
Her ancestral past was changed by a Treaty of Rapallo. Italy, by signing the treaty, recognized the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In exchange a portion of territory inhabited by Slovene ethnic group, known as Primorska (Littoral) Region, came under the Kingdom of Italy. From year 1922, Angel Pahor and his family became subject to forced cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native minority populations living in the former Austro-Hungarian territories. "The family fled fascism and escaped to Ljubjana," Ms. Pahor told.Later in the day of our phone call I visited Ms. Pahor. She shown me documents and objects preserved after his grandfather. She preserved a drawing, a caricature, of her grandfather made in the concentration camp Gonars. Angel Pahor was in internment as an activist and anti-fascist. "My grandmother told me how she run after a transport train living the station in Ljubljana for Gonars," Ms. Pahor shared transmitted memories.
"My grandfather is a tabu in our family," Ms. Pahor said before verbalizing testimonials about him.
In search of her grandfather Angel Pahor (1897) past Ms. Pahor learned that he was extremely honest. In internment he gave the last piece of bread to children. It is of immense importance to her hearing from one of the witnesses that her grandfather left the concentration camp in Gonars among the last. "He went in the camp and checked if someone was left behind," she repeated what she was told.
"He came to Ljubljana from Gonars after the capitulation of Italy. Than he was killed and left somewhere …. This was such a pain," Ms. Pahor shared a family's loss and unfinished grieving.
The past of Angel Pahor as known by his descendants is fragmented. He died after the internment in situation unknown to his family. He has no grave, he is not remembered among fascist camp internees, he is not remembered as anti-fascist.
What is provoking a constant pain in his granddaughter who is making attempts to create his legacy?
"As a young girl I could't understand that he has no grave, that he has no place to lit a candle," she told.To establish his internment and have his name written on the Gonars concentration camp victims memorial Marjana Pahor should contact the Concentration camp Rab-Gonars commeette (Taboriščni odbor Rab-Gonars). Reconstructing Angel Pahor's past the Archive of Republic of Slovenia is a right place to search. A large collection of documents (kilometers of documents) created in the administration headquarters of the occupied Province of Ljubljana, among them documents of arrests in the Province of Ljubljana and name lists of internees in the fascist concentration camps, is preserved. A novel Teleskop (1954), written by Ivan Bratko, one of the organizers of the escape from the concentration camp Gonars, is a valuable document of past events too.
Hopefully last suggestions will help the Pahor family in the process of a rightful and truthful remembrance of Angel Pahor.
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