The Boy Who Lived Before - Documentary about a childs memories of another life

[Tyger]

The case described above is interesting for a variety of reasons. I sometimes get the sense that there is a a supposition held by some people that occultists and esotericists are lacking in intellectual rigor when it comes to analysis of phenomena embraced by their own framework of 'belief' about the nature of the world. That is not the case. The following analysis of the Barbro Karlen/Anne Frank case illustrates that.

'And the Wolves Howled ' is the book by Barbro Karlen depicting her memories of her past life as Anne Frank. The following is a link to an analysis (by an esotericist/occultist) regarding the veracity of Karlan's claims.

LINK: Barbro Karlen and Anne Frank - Google Drive

Here is the text giving the context, always keeping in mind that this is written by a non-native English speaker, hence the occasional odd grammatical constructions: "In the previous issue of 'Motif', Hugo Verbrugh expressed his doubts about the contents of the book, “And the Wolves Howled”, by Barbro Karlen. According to him, Barbro Karlen damages the discussion of karma and reincarnation . Meanwhile Verbrugh decided to publish a study on this subject which will appear at the start of this month in a publication by the Kairos Foundation.This study will contain also, at the request of Hugo Verbrugh, a comprehensive contribution from Ron Dunselman, who led in 1996, as part of a theme day of the Anthroposophical Society, a work group on Barbro Karlen and Anne Frank. The following article is an abridged version of that contribution. The article was originally in Dutch and the translation of the quotes of Barbro Karlen’s book “And the Wolves Howled” are based on the Dutch text in this article not the english translation of the book."

The author of the analysis of this case then describes his connection to the case of Anne Frank, which is considerable and rooted in family history. (It can be read in the link). Because of the author's background and the fact that he is Dutch, he would have both access to the RIOD documents and an interest in delving them in this instance. (National Institute for War Documentation - RIOD - in Holland). He then continues his story: "In the autumn of 1996 I was asked to lead a workshop on Barbro Karlen and Anne Frank within the framework of a 'theme day' of the Anthroposophical Society and I agreed. The theme of rapid incarnation after the Holocaust was at that time very actual because of the book by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, 'Beyond the Ashes', in which experiences are described of two hundred people born after World War II and yet reporting poignant experiences that hark back to the holocaust.

"I first read some books of Barbro Karlen, she wrote from her twelfth year, and was impressed by the delicate, almost unearthly fairytale-like descriptions. In preparation for the workshop I wanted to meet her and ask her what experiences she had had that made her conclude to have been Anne Frank . We managed to have a conversation at her home in Sweden.

"Barbro told me - as she also writes in her book - about her youthful 'Anne - experience', about her nightmares as a child , about finding the way to the Secret Attic, on the cessation of the 'Anne - experiences' around the time she reached the age when Anne Frank had died, the later recurring and expanding nightmares. She also told me how she had described her life in book form by writing down by day what she saw herself writing in her dreams at night. During our conversation I experienced Barbro Karlen as having integrity and certainly not as someone who wants to cheat intentionally. I felt the suffering that she carried with her, the grief that her experiences had brought her and still did bring her. I was curious about the contents of her book and made the Dutch publisher “Vrij Geestes Leven” aware of our meeting and of the existence of a manuscript in the German language, which was possibly going to be published. In the weeks that followed the question how reliable her experiences and her claim to have been Anne Frank could be kept me busy, also because of the discussions in the workshop."

Now the author of the article presents the gestalt from which he understands reincarnation - not so much as an exposition but as a context for understanding the difficulty surrounding what appears to be past life memories. I need to note here that in all my study of this subject across the years, the teacher Rudolf Steiner, from close to 100 years ago, remains the most sophisticated source for reincarnational theory I have come across. The following detailed nuances are very important when considering the complexity of the human psyche and any definitive statements about past life memory and identity.

Text: "The inner images were won in large part out of experiences in the night, out of dreams, and dreams can be a mixture of all sorts of subjective elements as a result of desires, wishes, fears, after-images of the day, unconsciously perceived sensory impressions, etc. The entire content of a dream is rarely a pure source of reliable knowledge. But also in the case of inner images that may occur in extreme situations, such as with anxiety, stress or possibly in the situation Barbro experienced during her visit to the Secret Annex (“Het Achterhuis”, the hiding place of Anne Frank in Amsterdam), caution is required in regards to their reliability."

Most important paragraph -

"When these images are interpreted as belonging to one's own memory, one can be mistaken, as these images can also be the “soul shells ", elements or fragments of the shed personality structures of the dead, which in extreme circumstances - whether or not distorted - suddenly come to consciousness, but don’t belong to the person in question. When we include the concept of reincarnation in our considerations it is also possible that a soul on it’s way to incarnation from the cosmos to the earth assimilates, for some reason, the experiences of one or more deceased souls on their way from earth to the cosmos and takes those experiences with him into earthly life. When, for one reason or another, these experiences become conscious later, than they appear as belonging to the own personal memories of this individuality, but in fact they are derived from the deceased soul or souls. Because of these aspects, which are not further elaborated and substantiated here, but here used as an hypotheses, a high degree of caution is required in drawing conclusions about the subjective, as one own memory-experienced images.

"I left the theme for some years but this summer I read “And the Wolves Howled”. The descriptions of the nightmares and the people were new to me, since we had not talked about these during my visit. They called forth a renewed question in regards to the reliability of these "reincarnation memories " When Hugo Verbrugh called and asked me to participate in his publication - because of my involvement with the subject - I told him, after some more reading work, I would make a contribution."

 

[Tyger]

What follows is an analysis of Barbro's memories of being Anne Frank. It is very stark - it might not be comfortable for all readers - so be cautioned.

"In this article I will compare the memory of Barbro Karlen on a number of points with the descriptions that the National Institute for War Documentation gave of the same events. To start with it should be noted that in the description of the events by the RIOD, such as the arrest of Anne Frank, inaccuracies may be present. Harry Paape writes in the chapter's arrest : " The image we portray below of the events at Prinsengracht 263, is entirely based on communications - oral and written - of those who were there personally involved. The strong emotions which all were exposed to and the familiarity with the further fate of the deportees, of which they were aware when they gave their statements, make it very understandable that their memories of August 4 sometimes differ from each other and that some of them, who have been questioned repeatedly, have not always outlined their own observations in the same way. Successively I will discuss : the arrest, the diary and the man who was transferred to Bergen - Belsen. The description from “And the Wolves Howled” will always come first followed by the summary from the RIOD. Because Barbro Karlen wrote her autobiography not in the I form but in the person of Sarah Carpenter, the name “Sara” will regularly appear were Barbro Karlen is meant .

"The arrest:

"Barbro Karlen writes :

" "The darkness closes more and more around her, she cries and is paralyzed with fear. Her tiny body trembles and bathes in sweat . She hears them running around in the stairwell, the command tone cuts like a knife through her soul, dogs barking and with a bang the door is kicked open [ ... ] She tries to hide, but is pulled forward by a man in uniform. She calls her father, but there is no answer. There is an awful racket. Objects are knocked over, furniture is overturned and everywhere it is swarming with men in uniform. She holds on desperately to a red bound book, but while she is taken away someone snatched it from her hands. [ ... ] She has hidden herself and tries to make herself as small as possible. In her hands she has her book with the red cover. Her heart beats so loud that it is audible. She tries to keep her tears in. She gives a loud scream when someone grabs her by her neck and drags her forward. When she is dragged from her hiding place and held with an iron grip, the booklet falls on the ground. She got such a shock that she can only stay on her feet with great effort. When she is chased down the stairs she trips over the last steps and she falls to the ground, where she remains. Horrified she looks at her executioner . His eyes glow with hatred and he pulls her up by her hair . "Up, you dirty slut. " He drags her by her hair into the street and pushes her into a waiting black car. She screams at seeing and recognizing his face . [ ... ] Again, she is held with an iron grip by her neck. She is dragged into a black car and he sits down next to her. She feels his hands slip under her sweater and grapple one of her breasts, while he pushes her face into his lap. She hits around like a raging bull. She fights for her life and feels that she can die any moment. Suddenly she gets a slap in her face. She feels the blood flowing from her nose and is pushed to the floor. "

"According to Harry Paape of the RIOD the arrest went as follows:

" It was a beautiful, warm summer day ... Between ten o'clock and half past ten a German car stopped. A uniformed German and some Dutch men dressed in civilian clothes got out and walked into the building. [ ... ] One of the men remained in the warehouse and the German and the others went to the offices on the first floor One opened the door of the front office. He found there Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl and Kleiman. " This man, " Miep told many years later, " who had clearly visible a pistol in his hand and pointed it in our direction told us: " sit quiet and don’t go away" from the walking in the corridor I could work out that there were more people in the building . "

"Kugler [ a close associate of Otto Frank , RD ] , who in 1955 emigrated to Canada, was never officially questioned about the actual course of the arrest after the war. But in a letter to Schnabel, likely in 1957 he wrote: " Then suddenly a sergeant - major of the green police and three Dutch civilians appeared into my office and asked for the owner of the house ... The police wanted to see the warehouses in the front house and I opened the doors for them. I thought , if they don’t want anything else it may be alright . But when the sergeant major had looked at everything, he walked down the hallway and ordered me to come along, at the end of the corridor they suddenly all drew their pistols, and the sergeant major ordered me to shift the bookcase at the end of the corridor and open the door behind it. I said . " but that's only a bookcase "

"Then he became angry, because he knew everything, and pulled on the bookcase himself and and it moved, perhaps the hooks were not secured properly and exposed the secret door. They opened the door and I had to go up the stairs with the policemen following me, I felt their guns in my back . But the stairs are not wider than one human and so it happened that I arrived first into the room of the Frank family. Mrs. Frank stood at the table.”

"The only one from the fugitives who could tell the story of the arrest after the war was father Frank

"Put in the official language of the interrogating detective it was worded as follows :

"In the morning - it was about 10:30 - I was in the room of the son of the Van Pels family, where I gave him English lessons. At that hour an unknown citizen entered that room. He had a gun in his hand and pointed it at us. He told us to put our hands up and searched us for weapons. This man turned out to be a Dutch officer of the German Sicherheitsdienst of Amsterdam. Then he told us to go down. [ ... ] There I saw my wife and my two daughters, also with their hands in the air. I believe Mr. Kugler was also in our room , but I'm not sure it may also have been Mr. Kleiman. I also saw a man, unknown to me, dressed in a green uniform, standing there,who had also drawn his pistol. This man, I found out later, was called Silberbauer. With a short harsh command tone he asked where our money and jewelry were I pointed it out to him. then he picked up the briefcase which was standing in our room, in which my daughter Anne kept her papers , including her diary entries. He shook the content of the bag on the floor and put our jewelry and our money in it [ ... ] One of the SD'ers (SD is Security Service: in this situation the Dutch men working for the Germans dressed in civilian clothing) went downstairs to telephone for a suitable car to transport such a large group of detainees. It took a long time for that arrived . "The German Karl Silberbauer, meanwhile, walked around a bit in the room of the Frank family. His eye fell on the old army chest of father Frank, which had his name and rank in the German army mentioned on it. At his question Otto Frank confirmed that he had been a reserve lieutenant in the German army during the first world war : ' at once the attitude of Silberbauer changed. It even looked like he wanted to stand at attention for me[ ... ] he urged us not to rush, but told us and his subordinates to take it easy. ' At around 13:00” the car finally came , " a closed truck “, as Mr. Frank told him later. The eight people in hiding and Mr Kugler and Kleiman were moved down the stairs and loaded into the truck. "

"This concludes the description of the RIOD . The reader may judge for himself. There are similarities but also differences. No dogs in the description of the RIOD, not many uniformed men, but only one man in uniform, other facts in the events leading to the opening of the door to the room, a longer course of events , another method of transport of those arrested, no black car but a truck loaded with ten detainees, which makes the story as it is experienced by Sara in a black car, unlikely. Also the snatching of the diary from her hands and of being chased down the stairs and being dragged by her hair into the waiting black car is not to be found in the descriptions of the RIOD.

"The Journal

"Barbro Karlen describes the diary of Sara as a red bound book . The RIOD mentions not one, but several diaries : " On 12 June 1942, Anne Frank is thirteen years . She received a gift which included a “poetry” album, an almost square album with a red and white checkered cover. She would write her diary in it ... This album, in the sequence noted as Journal 1, covers the period from June 12 to December 5, 1942.

"In 1943 and 1944, Anne Frank made still some additions in this note book and used some of the remaining blank pages. "Father has yet again traced another diary for me " was the first sentence that Anne Frank wrote down in her subsequent new diary. This Diary number 2, a school exercise book, begins on December 22, 1943, more than a year after the last date entry in 1942 of Journal l. It seems unlikely that Anne Frank in the meantime has kept no diary. We must assume that that part is lost (perhaps it involves even more than one part ). Diary 2 runs until April 17, 1944 . In 1943 and early 1944 she also wrote short stories and events from the Secret Attic. The cash book in which she chronicled things , called simply the Story Book , has survived. On the first page of the last diary, Diary 3 - a school exercise book - is written: Diary of Anne Frank from 17 April 1944 to ... There is no end date mentioned, August 1, 1944 was the last day on which Anne Frank made an entry in this part.

"Only the first diary has some resemblance to the diary described by Barbro Karlen . . The diary which was torn out of Sara’s hands must have been one of the missing or the missing diary.

"The tormentor

"In “And the Wolves Howled” Barbro Karlen lets Sara experience in her nightmares how one of the uniformed men who so cruelly abused her in the Secret Attic and assaulted her in the black car, was transferred to Bergen - Belsen and becomes there again her torturer and rapist. She also writes that this man again played a negative role in her current life in Sweden. She writes about the time in Bergen - Belsen::

"There she hears those steps again . They are getting closer go in the direction of her plank bed (Dutch is brits). She flinches and makes herself as small as possible . But it has no use. He is already there and pulls the rag she wears of her body. His hands groping her all over her body and she feels she needs to vomit. She knows that he will hit her but she nevertheless resists him as if her life depended on it . It is the same man who a few months earlier had dragged her away behind the stairs of the house [ ... ] He leaves her with the words : "You can be sure that I come back I will finish what I started . . " " The end of the dream is dramatic , because this man is shot accidentally by his jealous lover ( a female guardian ) when he is raping Sara. The female guard wants to kill Sara, but kills her lover instead. In revenge she is swept away by the raging camp guards and one of them kills her.

"It is likely that this to Bergen - Belsen transferred man is the only uniformed man from the company that raided the Secret Attic. After all, Sara is in her dream assaulted by a uniformed man in and outside the Secret Attic. It is unlikely that any of the Dutch not uniformed SD helpers, under the command of the German SS Oberscharführer who participated in the assault would be transferred to Bergen-Belsen as one of the highest camp officers. It is much more likely that this would be the German SS Oberscharführer himself. A German of such a rank would be much more likely to get such a position then a subordinate Dutch citizen. The German SS Oberscharführer who conducted the command of the raid, was Karl Josef Silberbauer. From his life story as, described by the RIOD, we learn however that he was not transferred to Bergen- Belsen and therefore did not die in Bergen- Belsen. He lived till 1964 and therefore can not be associated with her tormentor in the Secret Attic, the car and the camp . For the same reason he can not incarnate in Sweden again, as described in “And the wolves howled” , to play the part that Barbro Karlen ( born 1954) subscribes to him in Sweden.

"This may make it clear that the by Barbro Karlen drawn conclusion that she has been (Sara) Anne Frank in her previous life is not self-evident . The discrepancy of the contents of her dreams and experiences compared to the physical sequence of events and lives (Silberbauer) as described by the RIOD gives no reason at all for such a firm conclusion . Yet Barbro Karlen experiences an inner, self evident necessity that she has been Anne Frank. Possible reasons for this I shortly indicated in the previous hypotheses. Further research is , given the topicality of the theme: reincarnation after the Holocaust, necessary.

"Hugo Verbrugh points rightly in the previous issue of “Motif” at the unacceptability of the fact that accusations are made about real human beings, who today live in Sweden, and are identified in her book through the positive statement of Barbro Karlen that she was Anne Frank, as the bestial Secret Attic-Bergen-Belsen-executioner and as the hateful, jealous, sadistic camp guard . This is terrible. As a result , people are harmed. In fact it is slander and defamation of character. .The book from Barbro Karlen is a clear illustration that the utmost caution and restraint should be exercised in drawing conclusions about ones own experiences of one’s own incarnations . This is even more the case when others, people involved in the claims, are still alive! It is to the merit of Hugo Verbrugh to insist that we draw our attention to this."

 

[Constance]

The False Memory Archive: Did that really happen? - Features - Health & Families - The Independent

"I have a strong memory of being a boy in a car driving along a country road in Suffolk," recalls a man who I will call Adam. "Rounding a corner near home, we swerved, narrowly avoiding a milk float. The milk float ended up on its side, covering the road in milk. I can still picture the road, a large oak tree and the milk sloshing about, despite the fact that the boy in the car was my father. I have never lived in Suffolk." ...

"The finding was both clear and groundbreaking – you can plant entirely false memories in a person's mind. Perhaps not surprisingly, scientists from around the world wanted to test just how far you could go. "You were attacked by a vicious animal. You nearly drowned as a child and had to be rescued by a lifeguard. You witnessed demonic possession. Your hand was caught in a mousetrap and you had to go to hospital. These are just some of the things planted in the minds of adults and, in the last case, children. In every case, significant numbers of people weren't just susceptible to the actual memory, but they gave confident, detailed and often emotional accounts about these experiences that never happened," says Loftus."

This article is relevant to several topics here on the forums, but might get the most consideration in this thread. The entire article is as fascinating as it is scary. The bottom line: People's recollection of even simple events cannot be trusted.

Hi Soupie. I ran across the post above (from a thread five years ago) and can no longer access the link to read your source. It might no longer be available since it's from a newspaper. But would you summarize for me the general point made in that article re 'false memories'? Were these false memories intentionally implanted by researchers in the minds of subjects in hypnotic states and then retrieved from those individuals later?

I would like to make two observations about what could be concluded from such a research program: first, I doubt one could conclude that the experiment proved that our lived experiences do not lay down veridical memories that can be trusted; and second, the fact that the subjects of the experiment "gave confident, detailed and often emotional accounts about these experiences that never happened [to them]" indicates a profound capability of humans to be open to, to absorb and empathize with, possible experiences not their own, whether witnessed or described to them. It is this capacity/capability of empathy, in humans and many animals as well, that demonstrates the innate intersubjectivity of consciousness beyond egoic boundaries, enabling us to bond with others and to enact ethical and moral behaviors, social precepts, and commitments to others. It means that individual consciousnesses exist within a sea of consciousness in which everything that exists is interconnected.

 

[Randall]

@Constance, if I understand you correctly, I think that you make a very valid point that just because memories can be false or implanted doesn't necessarily mean they are. I think skeptics ought to be subject to their own standards of evidence when making claims that a particular experience they can't explain is due to some misperception or false memory. Show us in no uncertain terms who or what caused the misperception or false memory instead of just jumping to the conclusion "OMG another false memory!"