An unbelievable goddamn scene

"We had a couple of interesting prisoners of war who had worked as film editors in the SS—Kurt von Molo and Walter Rode. The SS had filmed what we would call atrocities. Von Molo and Rode told us where they thought the films were. They told me that these films that they made were called desserts because Goebbels and the other top Nazis would show them to their guests after dinner. Von Molo and Rode hated each other. Each one told me that he himself was forced to do this but the other was really a Nazi. Von Molo told me that while he was working for the SS, a Jewish friend of his had hidden in his house through the war until the end, when he got caught and taken to a concentration camp. I was fed up with his story because—we used to laugh about it—we did not meet a single German who didn’t have a Jew in the attic, not one. So one day I said to von Molo, “I’ve got to tell you the truth, Kurt. I am sick to death of hearing these goddamn stories about Jews in the attic!” Von Molo said, “Well, the grapevine says that my friend is back in Berlin.” I said. “Well, Kurt, let’s take this whole day off. Let’s start in the morning, early in the morning, and look for your friend.” Sounds crazy, but we did. This guy’s girlfriend was a ballet dancer. Kurt thought he could find her. After hours and hours driving through the rubble of Berlin we finally did. She said, “Yes, he’s back. He has come back; he’s survived.” She told us where to look. Finally, after spending most of the day in destroyed Berlin—there was barely a rooftop left, God, what a mess it was—I swear to God we found this man. It was an unbelievable goddamn scene. There he was, still in his concentration camp uniform or pajamas, whatever stinking thing it was. We found him! And they embraced. Like a bad movie scene, they embraced, and the poor guy said to me, “This man saved my life.” After that I decided that Rode must be the Nazi!"

Budd Schulberg, The Paris Review. The art of Fiction no.169. Interviewed by Kurt Vonnegut.

(Budd Schulberg died on August 5th. Here you'll find the obituary published on The New York Times)

Wonderful new lies

"Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a 14 year-old fireman, mistaking him for a german soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.

So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.

Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy one time about a book that wasn't science fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brother's Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky. "But that isn't enough any more", said Rosewater.

Another time Billy heard Rosewater say to a phsychiatrist, "I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living".
-.-.-.-


"I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who where proud of fighting pure evit at the time". This was true, Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. "And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of thoses schoolgirls who were boiled. Earthlings must be the terror of the Universe! If other planets aren't now in danger from Earth, they soon will be."

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-5.

(Informació del bombardeig de Dresden: la meva crònica del 60 aniversari a l'Avui, I i II)