As the 63rd Place the building of Slaughterhouse 5 in the Dresden Ostragehege receives a Memorial Depot. In the basement of this building, at least 150 American prisoners of war (POWs) survived the air raids during the night of 13 February 1945, among them Kurt Vonnegut. 24 years later, in 1969, he incorporated his experience in Dresden into his novel “Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children’s Crusade”. With this work, he became one of the most well-known American authors of the 20th century.

Vonnegut’s novel describes the horrors of war in surrealist visual narrative. In his depiction war becomes senseless violence without heroes or glory. In powerful language the destruction of Dresden is remembered. The novel thereby constitutes a part of the complex history of dealing with the historic events of 13 February 1945. In Vonnegut’s depiction, Dresden appears as a city completely untouched by war, presented in fairytale romanticisation. Thus – without Vonnegut having been aware of that – the novel follows the omissions of National Socialist propaganda that had deliberately concealed Dresden’s military importance. Its worldwide proliferation in millions of editions strengthened that notion.

Marked on 17 February 2008, 11 a.m.