Boris Pahor and Alojz Rebula, who interviewed with Kocbek, were banned from entering Titoist Yugoslavia for several years and were only able to enter it to attend Kocbek's funeral.
He was accused together with his parents, who were involved in helping Slovene political emigrants across the border to the West, of "organizing an underground anti-Communist opposition and of revealing state secrets" by the Titoist regime and was in 1949 sentenced to four years in prison, but was released after two years on probation while a high school student at the Classical Grammar School of Ljubljana.
Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, he emigrated to Australia after the establishment of the Titoist regime in Yugoslavia in 1945.
Together with Dominik Smole, Taras Kermauner and Dane Zajc, he was one of the co-founders of the alternative theatre Stage 57, which challenged the rigid cultural policies of the Titoist regime.