Barbro Karlen | Anne Frank
One of the most culturally significant past life cases involves Barbro Karlen. Like Robert Snow and Jeffrey Keene, Barbro has led a career as a responsible public servant. Barbro served for years as a mounted policewoman in her native Sweden.
In her book, And the Wolves Howled, Barbro writes of her memories of being Holocaust victim Anne Frank. Anne Frank's diary is considered the most widely read document in the world, second only to the Bible. In Her book, Barbro assumes the name Sara Carpenter and writes her story in the third person. The first chapter starts with a dream of her family's arrest in their hiding place:
" The darkness closes tighter and tighter around her, she is weeping and afraid. Her little body is shaking and drenched in sweat.
She can hear them running up the stairs, the shouted orders pierce her body like knives. Dogs are barking and with a crash the door is kicked in.
She wakes up. It is almost light outside. The birds are singing and everything is quiet. Still not quite out of her dream as she dries away the tears from her face.
She is not yet five years old, but she had been living with these dreams for as long she can remember. She had tried telling people about what happened to her at night but no one seemed to understand how in some strange way she was living in two worlds at the same time. Her parents insisted on calling her Sara, even though her name was really Anne. She thought that was odd. She had often tried to explain to her mother why she didn't respond when they called out "Sara." She hadn't got used to her new name yet."
Part One - The Reincarnation of Anne Frank |
Barbro's narrative begins in a very similar manner to that of William Barnes. As a four-year-old child, Barnes told his parents that his name was "Tommie," not William. Barnes also had intrusive memories that were so disturbing that he became depressed and suicidal. Barbro's memories had the same effect, and at one point her situation became so intolerable, her memories so painful, that she too considered taking her own life.
Barbro, as Sara, describes the turmoil involved in writing her book and explains her purposes for making her past life remembrances public:
" She was compelled to write the truth about what had happened to her in this life, and about her memories from the previous one. She had to tell of her persecutors, who in their sick souls had pursued her...She had to write to release her soul from the fear and terror she had experienced. Then and now. She would leave out nothing. Perhaps she would be mocked or attacked, perhaps nobody would believe her story. But it didn't really matter. She would write simply because she had to. She would rid herself of her terrible memories and her persecutors for good. Never again would they dare to hurt her, or be able to.
Sara realized the risks in relating her memories from her life as Anne. Going out openly and claiming that you had been one of the most talked about people in history wouldn't be easy. But what should she do? She couldn't help remembering. It was not something she could change. Admittedly it would undoubtedly have been better if she had had the memories of a completely unknown girl instead. But she couldn't go and invent something just so as not to upset people...
Sara realized that people would laugh at her, many would perhaps attack her for what she wrote, but that would only demonstrate where the foothold of evil and foolishness really lay. If her story could only help a single unhappy being, then it didn't matter whether others mocked or maligned her...
Perhaps she would be blamed for trying to make money out of the name Anne Frank, but that wasn't something she could do anything about either...The important thing was not really for people to believe that she really had been Anne in her previous life, but to spread the message of reincarnation."
Part Two - The Reincarnation of Anne Frank |
In her book, And the Wolves Howled, Barbro first receives objective validation of her life as Anne Frank when her family traveled to Amsterdam and decided to visit the home of Anne Frank. This was Barbro's first trip to Amsterdam and it occurred when she was 10 years old. At the time of this visit, Barbro had not read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, and to this day, Barbro has not studied the life of Anne Frank. After checking into an Amsterdam hotel, her parents were about to call for a taxi, when Barbro, as Sara, interrupted them:
" We don't need a taxi, it's not far to walk from here." She was so dead certain that it didn't occur to her parents to object, they just meekly followed her as she walked off.
" We'll soon be there, it's just round the next corner." Sara herself wasn't at all surprised when they arrived, but her parents stood there speechless and just looked at one another.
" That's strange," said Sara when they stood in front of the steps up to the house. "It didn't look like this before." She looked wonderingly and her parents didn't know what to say.
" They entered the house and went up the long narrow staircase. Sara, who had been so carefree when showing them the way, suddenly went quite white in the face. She broke out in a cold sweat and reached for her mother's hand. Her mother was quite horrified when she felt Sara's ice-cold hand in hers...
" When they entered the hiding place the same irrational terrors overcame Sara as she had experienced so many times in her dreams. She found it hard to breathe and panic spread through her body...
" When they went into one of the smaller rooms, she suddenly stood still and brightened up a little. She looked at the wall in front of her. "Look, the pictures of the film stars are still there!"
" Her mother stared at the blank wall and couldn't understand this at all. "What pictures? The wall is bare?" When Sara looked again she saw that this was true. The wall was bare!..
Her mother was so confounded that she felt driven to ask one of the guides whether she knew if there had been pictures on the wall at one time? Oh yes, they had only been taken down temporarily to be mounted under glass so that they wouldn't be destroyed or stolen. Sara's mother didn't know what to say.
" How in the world could you find your way here first of all, then insist that the steps outside were different and then see the pictures on the wall when they weren't there? Sara's mother was full of questions and really quite irritated. But Sara was quite incapable of saying even a single word. She just wanted to get out of there, she couldn't stand it a moment longer...
" Her legs felt like jelly as she went down the stairs. She had never before in her life felt so wretched. The tears ran unrestrainedly down her face, and her legs would not carry her. When she reached the bottom step her legs folded under her and she fell."
Sara, or Barbro, was accurate regarding her memories of film stars on the wall. In Anne Frank, Reflections on Her Life and Legacy, James E. Young describes visiting Anne's room:
" As we enter, we note that the wall to the left is covered with Anne's childhood photograph and picture collection, carefully clipped form magazines, which she taped and pasted above her bed. Photographs of Greta Garbo; Deanna Durbin in the film First Love, Rudy Vallee, the Dutch royal family: Queen Elizabeth, then a young princess of twelve; and romantic drawings of the outside world, of farms and hills, are now sealed behind a pane of glass."
Of note, Barbro's physical reaction upon entering Anne Frank's home is remarkably similar to reactions described in other reincarnation cases. Her description of having panic, difficulty breathing and tears streaming down her face is similar to Jeff Keene's reaction when he visited Sunken Road, at the Antietam Battlefield. Barbro's legs failing her is reminiscent of Captain's Snow's sense of paralysis when he first saw the portrait of the hunchback woman in a gallery in New Orleans. In these cases, we observe that exposure to past life locations can trigger grief and anxiety reactions. These reactions may be due to the traumatic nature of past life memories, or the challenge past life memories present to established belief systems.
Barbro Karlen and Walter Semkiw, MD, have done a reincarnation presentation together. In this setting and in private, Barbro has shared that the episode involving the Anne Frank house, in which Barbro knew the way to the dwelling and that images Anne clipped of movie stars should be on the wall, marked the first time that Barbro's mother started to believe that Barbro's past life memories were real.
Another source of objective support
for Barbro's story is the fact that
Barbro
Karlen and
Anne Frank have the same facial architecture.
They have the same bone structure,
shape of the face, hair, eyes, nose,
lips and
chin. In certain photographs, strikingly
similar body postures are noted. Anne
and Barbro have both been caught
in photographs sitting at a desk,
with
their shoulders
and arms forming a distinctive trapezoid
shape.
In addition to physical appearance, other factors have carried over into Barbro's contemporary lifetime. In And the Wolves Howled, Barbro describes a phobia--an aversion to uniforms, that stemmed from the Frank lifetime. For example, once when stopped for a simple traffic violation by a policeman, Barbro feared for her life. Barbro had to overcome this phobia in order to pursue her chosen profession as a mounted policewoman. She also describes karmic relationships in her contemporary life that stemmed from the Frank incarnation. Barbro has recognized people from the prior era, who have played roles in her contemporary career as a policewoman.
There are many personality similarities between Barbro and Anne Frank. These include:
Lawrence L. Langer, in Anne Frank,
Reflections on Her Life and Legacy,
writes the following
regarding Anne.
" Spiritual insight rarely falls from the lips of a thirteen or fourteen year old girl. Indeed, as many of the new entries in the diary will show, Anne Frank was essentially a physical being, a lover of nature, intrigued with her own sexuality."
These traits are reflected in Barbro Karlen,
who at sixteen years of age
moved to a cottage in the woods, along with
her horse,
two dogs,
two cats, a sheep and a flock
of hens
and chicks. Barbro especially loved her horse
and horseback riding, which
eventually lead to her pursuing a career
as a mounted policewoman.
Her sexuality is evidence by
an early marriage and pregnancy by age 18. Indeed,
many
of Anne's desires seem to have come to
fruition early in the life of Barbro Karlen.
Barbro's spirituality is linked to
nature. In her book, she describes
a childhood
encounter with God while contemplating
footprints on
a sandy beach. The name she
gave God at that moment was the "Wanderer." Barbro
demonstrates, as did Anne,
the qualities of an old soul at a young age.
Despite her lack of training, Anne
Frank has been recognized as
a gifted writer.
Similarly, Barbro Karlen has
been a childhood literary
prodigy. Her first book was
published at 12 years of age and became the
all time best selling poetry book in
Sweden.
Between
ages
12 to 17, nine books written
by Barbro
were published. It is interesting
to note
that
Anne Frank always hoped to
be a published writer. On May 11, 1944, Anne
wrote
that her "greatest wish" was to become
a journalist, "and later on, a famous
writer." Once again, it
appears the Anne's desires
were fulfilled
early in
the life of Barbro.
Similar themes are found in the writings of Frank and Karlen. Though one may argue that these similarities are intentional, Barbro Karlen maintains that she has not studied Anne Frank's works. Anne Frank, due to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, reflected extensively on issues of good and evil. She also had a tendency to personify human qualities, as seen in the quotation cited below regarding "Lies." Anne's legacy is based on her ability to maintain hope in the face of dismal circumstances. Despite the persecution and suffering endured, Anne Frank's most famous quote affirms the basic goodness of man.
Barbara Karlen also writes of good and evil in her book, And the Wolves Howled, partly due to her memories of the Frank lifetime and partly due to persecution experienced in this lifetime. She also has a tendency to personify human qualities. Let us compare passages written by Frank and Karlen regarding evil:
" There's in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage."
" I get frightened myself when I think of close friends who are now at the mercy of the cruelest monsters ever to stalk the earth. And all because we are Jews."
" Yesterday evening, before I fell asleep, who should suddenly appear before my eyes but Lies! I saw her in front of me, clothed in rags...Her eyes were very big and she looked so sadly and reproachfully at me that I could read in her eyes: Oh Anne, why have you deserted me? Help, oh help me, rescue me from this hell!"
" If only she could write about how important, even vital it is never to give up in the face of evil, regardless of how dark and wretched everything may seem. Evil was present on the earth and would probably always be there. It would always try to conquer Good."
" In spite of everything, I still really believe that people are really good at heart."
" But the more people there were who believed in Good, and in the Good Force within themselves, the greater the possibility of keeping evil under control. If only they could believe in Good, and in the presence of the inner Force, many unhappy people would be able to fight their way up from the darkness."
" Most people on earth were not yet aware that they could find the Good Force within themselves and that it could help them if they only sought it out."
In closing, Anne Frank believed in goodness in the face of evil and persecution. In the persona of Barbro Karlen, we hear the voice of Anne in a wiser form. Barbro has had to integrate Anne's death at Bergen-Belson concentration camp. If we accept Barbara as the reincarnation of Anne, then Anne returns with a poignant message. That evil cannot kill spirit and that spirit has no particular religious, ethnic or racial ties.
Barbro was raised as a Christian in this lifetime, whereas Anne was persecuted as a Jew. We have already reviewed other reincarnation cases in which race has changed from one lifetime to another (see James Wilson/Oprah Winfrey). Barbro's case, as well as others, demonstrates that people can change religious and ethnic affiliation from one incarnation to another. Reflect that if only a few decades ago, the German people knew that a person could be born Jewish in one lifetime and Christian in another, that the Holocaust could never have happened.
Those who object to Barbro's story because it is thought to diminish the horror of the Holocaust miss the more important point--that spirit does not die and by the grace of God, the soul so loved and commemorated walks once again on earth. Let us not dismiss this glory.
I will cite one last quotation from Anne Frank's diary, which refers to the perseverance of the Jewish faith and people. It also has a poetic ring of truth regarding reincarnation, perhaps not intended by Anne, yet beautiful all the same.
" Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God who had made us who we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again."
