Kurt Vonnegut : Slaughterhouse Five - book review

I do not usually read books on WWII . It is the hobby of my father .I grew up surrounded by those books -photo albums and for years i believed that I knew everything about the horror of that era .
Only when before graduating at secondary school I learned that my father nearly frozen to death in a basement where he had to spend days during the cold winter of 1945 while his village was cluster bombed by the Royal British Air Force .He was six years old then .From that story I knew that not only Jews and Russians were the victims during the war but also Hungarian civilian people died .Somehow they forgot to teach that at school .
We were massively brainwashed and we did not care much about the German civilian victim's stories .They started the war after all .
Only lately I heard some hints about the unfair attack on Dresden .I thought that it was like my father's village -a simple carpet bombing .
So I read the book of Kurt Vonnegut because I wished to know what it was like . Kurt Vonnegut was there .He was an American soldier a prisoner of war . Humiliated and forced to work by the Germans nearly bombed to death by his own people .His personal account interested me much.
It was an interesting reading . It told the story of Billy Pilgrim the young optimetrist student who was captured by the Germans within the first week he landed in Europe .
Billy was dying though survived and through his visions and dreams we could learn more about his past and his future .The tragedy of that beautiful city wounded his soul for life .He escaped to the aliens for comfort . Just to know that time is our four dimension and death is not so terrible if we understand the different time perception of those little green men .
Otherwise the truth about Dresden bombing is too horrible with our Earthling perception of time to be able to live with its memory .It was an open city . Strategically nothing important .Under the protection of Red Cross .Undefended .Full of refugees -as it seemed to be the only safe place in Germany .The war was about its end .
Then out of the blue sky came the planes and attacked the city .Allied forces .First the traditional cluster bombing .Which was bad but most people would have survived that if there was not a second bombing of burning materials which turned the shallow shelters into burning catacombs .Those people who managed to get out from there were rushing to the river which was burning as well .Those who escaped to the squares or public parks got special bombs .Fire tornadoes lifted up people .They burnt into ashes or melted into liquid substance .
Out of 35 thousand buildings only 7000 remain .Nobody knows exactly how many people died as the town was full of refugees . They estimate that more than a million people were residing there .
The author survived only because he was accommodated at a slaughterhouse which had a really deep meat cellar .
They day after the bombing when they came out of their shelters to get some food and water the allied forces were flying so low that they were able to see that some people still alive and were shooting on them by machine guns or dropped on them smaller bombs .
After all the author does not think that all this attack was designed by evil people -just ignorant .They just wanted to hasten the end of the war .
These remarks made me feel that the book was censored . Kurt Vonnegut had a letter published after his death in which he called the Dresden attack obscene brutality
Kurt Vonnegut is easy to read .Humanism is radiating from every page.
He claims that 135 thousand people died .Some claims 25 thousand only . The Russians used to speak about 500 thousand victims. If we see that how big percentage of the buildings were destroyed we have to suppose that similar percentage of people perished as well . The city was home to 600 thousand people and jammed with refugees .But nobody knows how many were there at that inferno .
This was the biggest massacre in Europe .
And it is still not taught at schools .It is not commemorated widely .
Dropping bombs on civilians and refugees is still in fashion not so far from Europe . . .
So it goes .

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