Kurt Vonnegut, a post-World War II American author, witnessed some of the most horrific effects of war, and lived to tell about it in his life and books. Captured in 1944 and imprisoned in a Dresden slaughterhouse by Hitler's German Army, he survived the Allied firebombing of the city—which killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed more than 90% of Dresden—by hiding in a refrigerated meat-locker. After the bombing was over, the authorities put him and other American prisoners to work recovering bodies from the ruins. These horrific experiences were always looming in the background of his projects, even in those works that didn't explicitly refer to them.
Gedenkwand Schlachthof 5 am Originalschauplatz des Romans, heute: Messe Dresden (Memorial to Slaughterhouse 5 on the original site of the novel, today: Dresden Exposition). 24 January 2016. (By Architekt: Ruairí O'Brien; Foto: Ruairí O'Brien - Foto vom Autor, Ruairí O'Brien, an Schlurfi95 gegeben unter Verwendung u.g. Lizenz., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46579308)
Vonnegut's counsel about how to present ourselves to others in the world is grounded in realism, honesty, and integrity, some of the first principles for healthcare professionals that we will return to again and again in this book.
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"My Affair with Kurt Vonnegut," by Pamela Bliss (2011), was one of the 46 for XLVI murals that the Arts Council of Indianapolis commissioned. You can see it near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and N. Alabama St. in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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