Kurt Vonnegut – soldier, author, humanist, American prisoner of war and survivor of the Dresden fire bombings – died three years ago today on April 11th. I’ve always loved his writing. He invented ice-nine and the religion Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle, the characters Billy Pilgrim and Kilgore Trout in Slaughterhouse Five, and Trout’s son Leon watched the evolution of the human species over one-million years in Galapagos.
Also on April 11th, troops belonging to the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion led by Captain Frederic Keffer arrived in Buchenwald, completing the liberation of the infamous Nazi concentration camp where prisoners were starved, beaten, hanged, shot, and experimented upon. The camp was used by the Nazis for seven years, and in those seven years nearly one-quarter million people were incarcerated there. The Nazis killed one-fourth of them.
Kurt Vonnegut told us through his work that the sorrows of humankind were caused by the oversized human brain. Most days I have to agree with him.
Our friend Rudy was in the concentration camp when his plane was shot down in this war. I like your writing.
RIP Mr. Vonnegut.