Kurt Vonnegut’s War Journal Auctioned for Almost $200,000

Considered by many to be one of the finest writers the United States has ever produced, Kurt Vonnegut has written several groundbreaking novels, including the likes of Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Before becoming a famed writer, Vonnegut served in the US army and was taken prisoner by the Germans following the Battle of the Bulge. He was held in Dresden and managed to survive the allied bombing of the city by taking cover in a meat locker in the slaughterhouse he’d been imprisoned in.

Vonnegut’s experiences during the war had profound influence on his writing and, between 1944 and 1945, Vonnegut compiled a large scrapbook of photographs, correspondence, and newspaper clippings of that period. The collection has remained out of the public eye and in the safekeeping of the the author’s sister, until now.

As the Smithsonian reports, the collection sold earlier this month at auction for the grand sum of $187,500 at Christie’s Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts. The set includes 22 letters Vonnegut sent to his family, photographs the young soldier took of the aftermath of Dresden’s destruction, and a telegram dated January, 1945, which reads: “Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut Jr Has been reported Missing in Action.”

During the auction, Christie’s notes that the letters are typical of Vonnegut’s “trademark satire and dry humor” under even the most dire of circumstances, even under the extraordinarily grim circumstance he found himself in. One of the letters, written two weeks after his capture, reads: “It’s been one helluva holiday season for all of us.” Another letter, which Vonnegut wrote shortly after his liberation, reads: “It is a source of great delight to be able to announce that you will shortly receive a splendid relic of World War II with which you may decorate your hearth—namely, me in an excellent state of preservation.”

Vonnegut had a habit of masking the trauma he experienced with humour, but some letters are unable to hide his sadness. “This letter started as a huge joke. … [But] there’s nothing funny in watching friends starve to death or in carrying body after body out of inadequate air-raid shelters to mass kerosene funeral pyres—and that is what I’ve done these past six months,” reads one such letter.

During his time as a POW, Vonnegut spent much of his time working malt-syrup factory. At night he slept in the meat locker of a subterranean slaughterhouse which almost certainly saved his life once the bombing of Dresden began. The event was a profound moment in the author’s life and served as the inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five.

The winner of the auction remains anonymous but no doubt many Vonnegut fans will be hoping the buyer makes these writings public.