Chris Higgins
Vonnegut’s Letter to His Family About His Imprisonment in Slaughterhouse Five
by Chris Higgins - January 13, 2010 - 10:17 AM

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s most famous novel is Slaughterhouse-Five. You may have read it — it’s taught in many high school English classes in the U.S., though in others it has been banned. So it goes. Anyway, Slaughterhouse-Five is partially autobiographical; it’s based partly on Vonnegut’s experiences as a Prisoner of War in World War II, when he and other POWs were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse meat locker in Dresden in 1944, Germany. By day, they worked in labor camps; at night they slept in the slaughterhouse. During his imprisonment in the slaughterhouse (which was indeed slaughterhouse number five, or Schlachthof Fünf in German), the Allies fire-bombed Dresden, largely destroying it and inflicting mass casualties (estimated at 250,000 by Vonnegut). But Vonnegut survived.

Twenty-five years later, Vonnegut would publish the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and the rest is history. But what was his frame of mind during the imprisonment? What happened before he ended up in the slaughterhouse? How did he get out of it? The awesome blog Letters of Note publishes a letter Vonnegut wrote to his family from a repatriation camp in France, shortly after his POW experience. Below are some excerpts (emphasis added); read the rest here.

… Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations — the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn’t room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. …

… Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: — one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.

… On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden — possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.

… I’ve too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can’t receive mail here so don’t write.

May 29, 1945

Love,

Kurt – Jr.

I urge you to read the whole letter. It’s a riveting first-person account of being a POW in WWII, and the wry voice of Vonnegut the novelist was already apparent in his letter. In the same way he repeats “So it goes” in Slaughterhouse-Five, he repeats “But not me” in this letter.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

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Comments (13)

  1. The whole letter was also published in “Armageddon in Retrospect” along with a non-fiction recounting of the Dresden bombing, the last speech he wrote and several unpublished short stories. Most of the stories are set in Dresden, or at least reflect his feelings of mass destruction in war. A must read for Vonnegut fans.

    posted by Ethan on 1-13-2010 at 10:31 am

  2. What a coincidence that this was posted today, and last night I left Newbury Comics with Kurt Vonnegut’s Memoirs! Love his work, Slaughterhouse 5 totally enthralled me…and now I have a weakness for the man’s books. Cat’s Cradle was also quite a trip to read. I can’t wait to read more.

    posted by Meg on 1-13-2010 at 11:01 am

  3. I read Slaughterhouse Five when I was 19 years old, I loved it. I was given to me by a a French guy I met at a rockfestival in Wisconsin…I’ll have to read it again!

    posted by Spiro on 1-13-2010 at 12:51 pm

  4. Thanks for this blog.
    I read Slaughterhouse-Five a few years ago (great book!). It’s amazing to see how much of it was based on first hand experience as described in the letter.
    My understanding is the Allied side try to sweep the whole Dresden affair under the rug after the war. Vonnegut must have faced some disbelief when Slaughterhouse-Five was first published. Especially regarding the numbers of dead and the thoroughness of the destruction.

    posted by Annon on 1-13-2010 at 12:56 pm

  5. Vonnegut has long been my favorite author, we even share the same birthday!
    I am a huge fan of his letters and essays, he was a brilliant literary mind.

    So it goes.

    posted by Heather on 1-13-2010 at 12:58 pm

  6. Wasn’t it “Schlachthaus funf”? “Haus” rather than “hof”. My copy is packed away, so I can’t check.

    One of my favorite parts of the book is when he stops the story to point himself out as the soldier w/ dysentery who’s got the runs so bad he thinks his brains are leaking out. I realize it’s not a pleasant subject, but that’s the point, this horror was real, even though he casts it off so many times w/ the numb “So it goes.”

    posted by Big Jonny on 1-13-2010 at 1:14 pm

  7. An exceptional letter. The relief his family must have felt finally finding out his fate. I remember reading slaughterhouse five in high school, everyone thought I was reading some slasher novel. It’s amazing such a piece goes largely unnoticed.

    posted by hockey zombie on 1-13-2010 at 1:23 pm

  8. Big Johnny – Wikipedia and Letters of Note seem to list it as Schlachthof Fünf; I’m not a German speaker so I’m not sure why it would be this way. It may be an error in Wikipedia?

    posted by Chris Higgins on 1-13-2010 at 3:56 pm

  9. Big Johnny and Chris – It is Schlachthof Fünf. Hof, by literal definition is more of a “yard” (in the sense of courtyard). So the literal translation of the title would be Slaughter Yard 5. However, the building (and surrounding area) which in Germany is called Schlachthof is, in English, called a slaughterhouse. Haus is the literal translation of house, but not the correct useage in this context.

    posted by Moth on 1-13-2010 at 5:32 pm

  10. BEST.BOOK.EVER. I had the honor of turning my son onto it several years ago. Now he’s an english major. Coincedence?

    posted by chrisr on 1-13-2010 at 5:42 pm

  11. “So it goes” was stolen from the intro to Guignals Band by Ferdinand Celine. Vonnegut was such a fan that he wrote the intro to Celines last novel, Rigadoon. Go to the source and read Death on the Installment Plan and prepare to be changed.

    posted by mikeb on 1-14-2010 at 1:35 pm

  12. My favorite book! I love when Mental Floss has stuff about Vonnegut.

    posted by vegebrarian on 1-14-2010 at 4:08 pm

  13. Having read the novel over a dozen times, I can see his experiential inspiration for a number of scenes.

    posted by Mohamed Mughal on 5-28-2010 at 5:34 pm

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