12 Facts About Igor Torkar

Igor Torkar was the pen name of Boris Fakin, a Slovenian writer, playwright, and poet best known for his literary descriptions of Communist repression in Yugoslavia after World War II.

Igor Torkar's teachers included the literary historian France Koblar, the writer Jus Kozak, and the painter Bozidar Jakac.

Igor Torkar 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.

Igor Torkar wrote political satires in the satirical magazine Pavliha, some of which were censored by the authorities of the Drava Banovina.

Igor Torkar never joined the partisan resistance, but organized the collection of supplies for the fighting units of the Communist resistance.

Igor Torkar 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.

Igor Torkar spent four years in prison, including two years in solitary confinement.

Igor Torkar was released in 1952, and was prohibited from publishing for two more years.

In 1971, the High Court of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia nullified the sentence from 1949, and Igor Torkar was acquitted of all charges.

Igor Torkar published his first volume of poetry, Mad Chronos in 1940, with his last collection of poems, Songs of Solitude, written in the last years of his life and published in 2003.

Igor Torkar has written over 10 collections of poetry, over 20 plays which were played on renewed theatre stages in Slovenia and in former Yugoslavia, numerous TV and radio scenarios and novels.

Together with his lifelong friend, the poet Matej Bor, Igor Torkar was the foremost representative of the neo-humanist trend in Slovenian literature.