The case of S: Possible recollections of two previous lives and of intermediate states between incarnations by Titus Rivas Como los judios aunque la carne me quemen no reniego de lo que he sio Soleares of "El Planeta" "Nobody will leave this place alive" Text on a wall in Chelmno Abstract A gifted Dutch-Jewish girl with an American background, S of Amsterdam, spontaneously recalled two previous lives and two intermission periods between lives when she was about three years old. S's memories of past lives seem to be strongly related to the Shoah and possibly also to the reign of the 17th Century Spanish Inquisition in Peru. Her memories of intermediate states between lives seem to be characterized by relevant Hebrew, Yiddish and Spanish terminology. The author concludes that the case of S probably contains paranormal elements and that it fits the transcultural pattern of Dr. Stevenson's "Cases of the Reincarnation Type" (CORTS). The special interest of the case lies in: (a) recollections of two previous incarnations, (b) thematic relations between the two lives recalled and the present life, (c) connections between S's memories and experiences of her mother Leora, (d) memories of an intermediate state or intermission period (MIPS), (e) the connection between the recollections of an intermission period and the Kabbalistic world-view, (f) a dream of her mother about a moment of choice between two incarnations, and (g) a corroboration of a possible link between CORTS and giftedness. Introduction Most probably, there are favourite topics for reincarnation fantasies such as the Titanic, Atlantis, Ancient Egypt and life at the French royal court. A topic that undoubtedly appeals to the imagination just as strongly is the Holocaust of Jews or "Shoah". Quite rightly, the media still give a lot of attention to this enormous crime and tragedy, which is even more necessary than ever, now that misled characters influenced by revisionists claim that there is a so called "Auschwitz-lie" and now that many others claim that "by now, we know very well what has happened to the Jews" (implying that they are simply fed up with the subject). The Holocaust of Jews (and of Gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped people, etc.) has been one of the main crimes against humanity in history, even though it is true that there are many parallels to other forms of genocide, like that of "Native Americans", the Kurdish people, the Armenians or what has recently happened in Kosovo, Bosnia and Ruanda. Somebody who through her diary has become the symbol for many of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is the teenager Anne Frank of Amsterdam. There have already been at least two girls who claimed to have been none other than that same Anne in their previous life. The best known of them is the sympathetic Barbro Karlen from Sweden who would have had memories of this life already when she was still a toddler and who would have developed into a talented author. However, some of Karlen's memories seem to be very dubious or even incorrect when considered from a historical point of view and all of her remaining recollections are limited to things that are generally known. The other girl is Teresa, a young American who would also possess a lot of literary talent. Obviously, one of them is wrong. Therefore I conclude that the persecution of Jews can also be a topic for reincarnation fantasies. Actually, this is what we may expect if we realize that fantasies often manifest in relation to emotional subjects and one can hardly think of a subject that is more shocking than the Holocaust. Outside the realm of parapsychological reincarnation research, there recently was a case of abnormal psychology related to the Holocaust, that of Binjamin Wilkomirski (sometimes erroneously written as Wilkimorski) alias Bruno Grosjean. In his book "Fragments" Wilkomirski claimed he had been a Jewish child survivor of concentration camps, but researchers found he really was Bruno Grosjean, a Swiss adopted child. DNA-testing confirmed that Wilkomirski was making up a Holocaust past. From a scholarly viewpoint, these facts should us make all the more cautious when someone claims to have died as a victim of the Shoah. Moreover, and this is actually even more important, we must never forget how sensitive an issue the Holocaust remains for survivors and relatives. If we want to be ethically sound as researchers, we should never become guilty of participating in a sensationalist exploitation of this horrible tragedy. However, this is not everything that can be said about the role that the Holocaust plays in possible recollections of previous lives. This became clear as never before by the publication of the book "Beyond the Ashes" by the American Rabbi Yonassan Gershom. In this book Reb Gershom first of all gives a lot of attention to Jewish doctrines about the hereafter and reincarnation. As it turns out, reincarnation has for a long time played an important role within the Kabbalah and Hassidism. The rabbi not only deals with these doctrines, but also with the experiences of persons who claim to have perished during the Holocaust in their previous incarnation. As a Jewish pastoral worker he has spoken with about 250 persons who claim this. About these experiences he possesses written declarations of 78 informants. All of these people live in the Western world and many of them are not Jewish in their present incarnation. Gershom, who by the way himself has had a dream about a previous life during the Holocaust, is well aware of possible alternative explanations for the various claims. He is well capable of distinguishing between stronger and weaker cases. The experiences that he describes are quite diverse, but they do show common features, which in their turn remind us of the cases of Dr. Ian Stevenson, the main Western authority in the field of empirical reincarnation research. Such features include inexplicable inclinations that remind one of Jewish rituals, or recurrent dreams in young children that seem to be directly related to the Holocaust. Not all of the cases that are discussed by him are equally convincing, but I think that some of them deserve to be taken seriously, such as the case of Nancy. This is an American student who wanted to convert to Judaism. During her first service at the synagogue, Nancy suddenly started gasping for breath and coughing while she was saying the so called Shema-prayer. She could not breath and continued repeating Adonai Echad ('the Lord is one') from the first line of this prayer. Furthermore she experienced a vision in which she died in the gas chamber. 'Adonai Echad' turned out to be words commonly spoken by Jewish people at their deathbed. The book has been reviewed in the American Jewish and Non-Jewish press and this finally led to the publication of a second book based on more experiences of a similar nature, "From Ashes to Healing". Another collection of such cases is that of Reb Zalman M. Hiyyah Schachter-Shalomi. In 1987 he published in 1987 the article "Thoughts on the Shoah: Two Jewish Holocaust reincarnation cases" in Tikkun-Magazine, Vol 2, 1. Just like Gershom, he had been approached as a rabbi by all kinds of people with possible memories of the Shoah. One of these cases is that of person who took part in a so called Havurat Shabbat (Shabbat-retreat). One of the visitors introduced a breathing exercise, in which the participants alternatingly had to breath deep and fast. The respondent panicked and suddenly begged the Maschiach (Messiah) in Yiddish to come (to this world). He tried to open the door, but did not succeed and collapsed whimpering. Afterwards, he told his friends that during the exercise he had lost contact with reality and had entered a state of consciousness in which he relived how he perished in a gas chamber. The best cases collected by Gershom and Schachter-Shalomi do indeed indicate authentic memories of a previous life during the Holocaust. All the same, it would not hurt if we were to find still more cases that could corroborate the ones found thus far. Leora After I had organized a lecture by the Indian reincarnation researcher Dr. Kirti Swaroop Rawat together with Lynne de Jong-Decker, the director of Centre Aurora in Amsterdam, Lynne informed her friend about our research. This friend is the "liberal" Jewish photographer and writer Leora Simpson-Baikie-Rosner, born in New York City. I had explained to Lynne about what kind of reincarnation cases Dr Rawat and I were looking for and she had already announced to me that she would introduce me to someone who had experienced a similar case. This person was Leora Simpson-Baikie-Rosner. Apparently, Leora found it painful to tell me the story of her daughter S and she felt a great sadness while describing the events. Also, she had the feeling that she herself had experienced something similar but she could not explain what exactly it would have been. At the end of my description of S's ostensible recollections of the Holocaust, I will mention two experiences of Leora herself that are possibly connected to the case. Leora told me that when her daughter S (then seven) was about three years old, she had claimed that she had already lived before twice. Leora had never told her anything about the Holocaust and claimed that she never had had any reason to do so. Before the events developed, Leora and her husband Ed, a musician, had had some belief in the idea of reincarnation but Leora had not been completely convinced of it. Lynne of Aurora had only been something like an acquaintance. Concerning the "esoterical", Leora had once done a course of "psychic self-defense", and she had read a lot about the well-known American medium Edgar Cayce who also taught a reincarnation-doctrine (mixed with Christian concepts). She told me she was not aware of the specific Jewish traditions about reincarnation such as those of the Kabbalah. Among Leora's maternal ancestors there was a chief rabbi. Besides, there was at least one more rabbi among her ancestors plus somebody who was buried at Tiberias who wrote a commentary about Kabbalistic scriptures. Finally, it is important to mention that her twin sister, who lives in Israel, has an orthodox-Jewish orientation and is interested in the Kabbalah. One way or the other, Leora claims that she was still quite skeptical about reincarnation before S told her story. Leora immediately noted down what S told her in a notebook, which she called "S's book". That she really did so, was confirmed by her husband Ed Simpson-Baikie. This first phone-call with Leora led to more calls -also with Ed-, a written correspondence, messages by e-mail and several meetings with Leora and S. Also, I met a friend of Leora's at Asterdam, Pauli Hofmeester, and her daughter Sissy who confirmed certain details of the story that Leora had written down. During my visits to the family in Amsterdam in February and March 1998 I was assisted by Indian researcher Dr. K.S. Rawat of Faridabad [comment 2005: presently based at Indore], director of the International Council for Survival and Reincarnation Researches. In August 1998 I met the family again for an interview by the Dutch Hindustani (for Hindus from Surinam) broadcasting company OHM-radio, together with journalist Lydia. A case like S's is "unsolved", in the sense that it cannot be verified just what historical lives she may have recalled. However, its basic structure corresponds to that of solved cases studied by dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. There is absolutely no claim on my part that S's case belongs to the hard core of Cases of the Reincarnation Type. My main claim about this case is that it certainly seems to express the same natural phenomenon that we see in solved cases. I. Life during the Holocaust Leora's dreams Seven years before she got pregnant with S, in 1982, Leora had a dream about a girl of about 19 years. "I was standing in a cement room. It seemed to be large. In the middle of the room was a huge pile of bodies. The bodies were clothed. (I realise this made it easier to look at the bodies.) Then I found myself outside walking with a girl whom I judged to be about 19 years old. She had cream coloured skin, very dark, maybe black colour curly hair to the shoulders. Her eyes were the same, so dark they appeared black shining coals. She wore a coat that came to mid calf and was in the style of the 30s or 40s. I don't remember what she had on her feet. We communicated telepathically as we walked along. I didn't know where we were when suddenly we were walking along a small path. To the left was a white wall. At a certain moment the girl stopped. She raised her right hand and pointed to a house with some sort of railing and said, "That's where I'm going to be born!" This dream occurred when I lived on the Kromboomssloot." At first, Leora thought that this dream was related to the unborn child of a friend of hers and later also to a child of her twin sister, but there weren't any clear connections between the dream and the surroundings in which the children in question were born. Only later on, when Leora and her husband had moved to their present address they both recognized the railing and the white brick wall in Leora's dream next to their own house. It is remarkable that when she dreamed about the house, it did not even exist yet. At S's birth she had the same dark eyes and hair as the young woman in Leora's dream. Therefore Leora thought: "This definitely must be her." Two other dreams of Leora took place just two weeks before S was born. The first dream resembled a non-verbal meeting with members of some kind of committee. The same 19-year old girl from the first dream was standing in front of Leora but it seemed as if Leora was both standing behind her and "was part of her or the other way round." Before them there was an old house. It looked like an old house at a ranch. There was a veranda surrounding the whole house and on it there were about 7 to 8 people. Among other things, Leora saw an old woman who did not look very nice and she supposed that this was someone who was critical. The other people did seem friendly and relaxed and some leaned backwards on their rocking chairs. The sun was shining and the situation seemed to be rather peaceful. A few days later, Leora got yet another dream that was related to the previous two. Once more, she could see the same girl and once more Leora was standing behind her and at the same time she was part of her. The people from the former dream were sitting at a long table now. This happened in a dark room in which only a table was lit by a lamp hanging above it. It reminded Leora of a movie about spies. The people behind the table started their interrogation: "Have you taken the right decision?", "Are you sure that you want to do this?", "Do you want to go through with this?", "Are you sure that you want to be with these people?", "Do you stick to your decision?" They went on and on with their questions and each time the girl answered: "Yes! I'm sure. I want to be with these people. Yes, I want to go through with it. No, I don't want to change my mind. Yes, I have taken the right decision." This seemed to continue like this for a while. Leora felt surprised that she was allowed to be present and also because they did not seem to notice her. She still feels honoured that she was allowed to experience all this. It is interesting to note that according to "Beyond the Ashes" by Rabbi Gershom this dream corresponds somewhat to a Jewish tradition of a heavenly tribunal, mostly formed like the earthly 'beet din' or rabbinal court of justice, at which Jews used to settle their disputes during the centuries before they were given civil rights by secular governments. Gershom also tells us about an interesting correspondence between this tradition and the research of Joel Whitton who regressed a lot of hypnotized subjects to what he calls the 'bardo', a term taken from Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism that refers to the spiritual state in which the soul would dwell between two incarnations. A large percentage of Whitton's clients told him that they had to appear in front of an ethereal council of judgement. S's birth S Audra Simpson-Baikie was born on September 21st 1990. Leora told me that there was a full moon that night and that it was both Jewish Newyear and the beginning of Autumn. Her first name 'S' means "gift" in Hebrew. Her second, English, name Audra means "noble strength". During the pregnancy S already seemed to have had contact with the world outside, because she responded to touching. The pregnancy was free of complications. Birthmarks When she was born, S showed a strange kind of birthmark on her forehead. At first, it just consisted of a white circle with a round spot in the middle of it. Two weeks after her birth, the spot became bigger until it was as big as a small marble. It was dark red and when S screamed or cried it became purple. At the same time, a second birthmark developed at the exterior of the upper part of her right arm. The shape of this birthmark looks like a leaf. S did not experience any discomfort from either of these marks. She just found it annoying when other children or "stupid" adults touched it and when they pressed her "headlight" (as it was commonly called) without asking her permission for it. S's development Right from the start, S was a remarkable child. She did not take naps during the day, but stayed awake from 9 a.m. till midnight. As a baby S was alert and she seemed interested in her environment. She did not need a lot of sleep. From the time she was 11 months old she walked alone without anyone holding her hand. She wanted to get out of the pram very soon. She started talking from the age of 1. When she was 2, she stayed clean day and night. Just like Ed, Leora stimulated S's psychological development from a very young age onwards. She explained to S what she saw, showed her all kinds of things and explained how they worked. S responded to all this with curiosity and interest. Leora also took S with her to museums and to the theater, for the first time when she was just 7 weeks old. When she was 4 months old she could sit by herself and when she was one and a half she was talking fluently. From the start, it seemed as if she had a photographic memory, and she also showed a great linguistic capacity. When Leora's twin sister was visiting them with her husband and son, the son refused to speak English instead of Ivrit. By the end of the week, S was already capable of making short sentences in Ivrit. Leora described S's personality as persistent, curious, caring, sensitive to other people's emotions, with a great sense of humour, and she told me that she was very popular with others. People love her and often spontaneously get in touch with her. That S is very gifted, is also made clear by her poems which she created already before she could write and which were written down by her mother immediately after S produced them. When she was seven, S read texts in Dutch very fast (and to a lesser extent also in English). She could read already during second grade (in Holland this is approximately the same as Kindergarten in the US). She intuitively senses how other people are feeling, she can learn very well and she is very interested in medical topics. All this is not just claimed by her parents, but it is confirmed by the team of the well-known expert in the field of gifted children, Dr. F.J. Mönks of the Catholic University of Nijmegen as is shown by a report of his center of September 4th 1996, written by Dr. Mönks himself and by M.J. van Overbeek, M.A. In this report they mention as S's hobbies: solving puzzles, painting, listening to stories, music, theatre, museums and ballet. Furthermore, her talents are confirmed by the report: "She makes the impression of being very wise and her way with language is excellent." (pag.2); "S has a very strong memory" (pag.3); "Especially the verbal side of S seems to be very much ahead of that of her peers." (pag. 4); and "She has good calculating abilities and can concentrate well on her work". And: "She asks a lot of "why"-questions and has an exceptional use of language that does not seem to correspond to her age. Also, she makes up a lot of poems, that her mother writes down subsequently." Scarred by the Holocaust? Leora claims she had never told S anything about the Holocaust before she was three, because there had not been any reason to do so and also because S was still so very young. From the beginning S showed some peculiar characteristics that one could easily relate to her later story about (what seems to be) the Shoah. As an infant she was very afraid of fire-crackers, until she was about six months old. She totally panicked over them and in general she did not like loud bangs. When she was still very young she did not want to eat pork, whereas her parents are liberal Jews. This accords well with an orthodox-Jewish diet and thus also with such a possible background in a previous life. Also, S had nightmares when she was very young and she never wanted to talk about them. Leora told me that S would often cry softly in her sleep and then finally she would wake up and call for her. Afterwards, S just told her that she had had a nightmare and that it was bad. Furthermore, S was terribly afraid to deal with men and especially to visit the family general practicioner. She did not want to hear of it. Leora told me that her general fear of men was evident even before she could walk. If a man (other than her father Ed) would try to lift her up, she would scream with terror and she would stretch her hands towards Leora. It seemed as if she was afraid of being separated. The screaming was so deafening, that people would always return her to her mother immediately. This phobia was confirmed during the tests at Mönks's center, because she started to cry out of fear "that a mister would carry out the testing." From the Oude Schans to "Warsaw" The very first time that S said anything at all about a previous life during the Holocaust was when she was between 2 and a half and 3 years old, while she was walking with mother near the Kromboomsloot in Amsterdam and enjoying the sun with her. She was happy and apparently she felt like talking about it, to tell her mother what she could remember. She always talked about her memories if she was alone with her mother, during a walk or after dinner. In November and December of 1993, i.e. when she was 3 years old S told her mother that she used to live at the Oude Schans 39 during the 30s. She pointed at the house in question. She claimed she could recall a lot of details of this house. For instance, she described "chachkes" (Yiddish for "small things", which was by the way a word already known to her present family) in the windows on the street side. Such things as a set of elephants; she remembered a small one and a big one and described how small the eyes were. Further there were small boxes made of wood and things were put in them. There were bookcases on one wall from floor to ceiling. On January 22nd 1994, when she was 3 years and 4 months she once more described the house on the Oude Schans. Following a list made by Leora the details were: "- black brick (dirty) - front door is green - red roof tiles - metal thing holding up the front gable (S called this a "voortijl", Dutch spelling) - small balcony - 2 doorbells - 9 stories (apparently incorrect) - white hook for hoisting - chackes on the windowsill - boxes with "thingie dingies" - something to burn garlic in - there was a pretend door that couldn't be opened, no handle, a little window - stairs that lead to a landing to the front door - a mezuzeh next to the door (own door) - windows had rope and weight things for opening and closing - windows had a latch that had to be pushed with the finger and it would turn - S lived upstairs and others lived downstairs." On March 18th 1994, i.e. when S was about 3 and a half years old, she told Leora that her name had been "Sabina Olthof" or so it sounded. About a year later S and Leora were visiting a friend who lives nearby, Pauli Hofmeester and her daughter Sissy. S was playing with her girl-friend Sissy Hofmeester, when that girl's mother, Pauli, showed Leora a book that she had found in her book-case. She had obtained her book from her grandfather. Pauli opened the book at a certain page on which a picture could be seen of the street "Oude Schans" as it had been before the war. You could see some kind of market on it. S heard this, she stood up, looked at the picture and told everybody present that there had been more than what you could see on the photograph. You had to imagine that you were looking at a spot to the right of what you could see on the picture. On that spot there were women who had rolled up their sleeves. Their arms and hands looked red. If their hands would get too cold, they would hold them against some kind of big tubs and then their hands would get warm again. Pauli Hofmeester was stunned by this behaviour and asked how S knew this. S simply replied: "I just do. I've been there". Pauli confirmed the accuracy of S's story and said that her own grandfather had told her the same thing. After S had uttered these words, she went on playing and drawing with Sissy as though nothing had happened. In February 1998 Pauli Hofmeester also told Dr Rawat and me that S had looked a lot older during this episode and that she had used more Yiddish words than her family normally uses, although Pauli could not specify what words exactly. At another occasion S described how "hunters" were chasing after Jews. Later on, she also called these hunters "Nazis". One day she had gone for some shopping at the Nieuwmarkt and when she came back again she saw that her house was burning. The hunters had set fire to her house. The police and fire-brigade were trying to extinguish the fire. Nowadays the front of number 39 mentions: "restored in 1941", which convinced Leora that this statement was correct as well. S also told her that she was sitting on the roof of the house when Jews were driven together. She recalled how her parents were separated from each other by the hunters, and she used the word "divorced" to refer to this. She also remembered that she saw how they had been shot in the street. S told Leora that she had hidden herself in a corner of the house for three days but that she was finally discovered by the hunters. She was deported to Warsaw (sic). She used the English word 'Warsaw' and repeated it: "Warsaw, Warsaw". When S was talking about Warsaw, she looked, according to Leora, more lucid than otherwise, more mature, as if she were in touch with something not physically present. It also seemed as if Leora and S were two adults who were sharing common memories with each other. Then, S symbolically described an event that she had witnessed. She told her mother that all the "puppies" were gathered on the square. The hunters took hoses and sprayed the puppies and these "all flew into the sky" (sic). As she heard S telling about this, Leora had a kind of vision during which she saw images that were linked to S's words and she experienced this as a telepathic impression of the terrible recollection of the scene described. When S died, she would have been about 19 years old. In August and September 1994, when S was about 4 years old, she told her mother, or at least referred to this, that she had died in the gas chamber and that she had left her body behind. A friend of hers, a person referred to as "Blokker", helped her with it, telling her how to leave her body. She did not mention where she knew this Blokker from. She also claimed that she would have chosen her present mother or both her parents and the neighborhood because in her previous life she would have lived at the Oude Schans, very close to her present house at the Korte Koningsstraat. Also, she said that in her previous life she had not been able to do what she had planned to do and that she wanted to do everything in her present life. When she was 3 and a half, S had already told Leora that she wanted to be something that Leora summed up as a "pathologist". By that age, she already showed a rather morbid fascination for diseases and medical matters, that was still there when I met her in 1998. This fascination was recorded as well in the report by Mönks and Van Overbeek: "S shows a lot of interest in anatomy and likes to watch programs as 'Surgeon's job'. She asks a lot of questions about genetics. In the future she wants to become a pathologist." (p. 1). When she had just become three, in October 1993, S also made an intriguing poem which Leora related to the Holocaust: "A copper moon is the sound of children crying". According to Leora this haiku-like poem reminds one of the smoke from the crematoria in the death camps. There is every reason to believe that the poems that Leora ascribes to S are authentic. This point is not doubted by Mönks and Van Overbeek, and Ed also confirms that Leora really wrote down S's own poems and that she did not replace them by her own creations. Perhaps this is hard to believe for someone who has not met S personally. For those who like me have spent some time in her presence, it is completely credible. When S was 7, she could still remember things from this previous life, but not everything. For example, she still recalled a beautiful vase in a cupboard and some things from a period in the hereafter that she experienced after her life during the Holocaust. Especially the episode that she had described when she visited Pauli Hofmeester and Sissy, was something she still remembered very well, which can be explained from the fact that this had remained a subject of conversation over the years. Despite her apparent conscious oblivion, she still seemed to possess some implicit knowledge that she could express spontaneously. In the meantime, she does not feel any nostalgia for her previous life, and she considers it as "just a life." However, she would like to visit the house at the Oude Schans. Possible connections to the Holocaust To improve the readability of this paper, I first want to look at the connections between S's story about her life and death during the Shoah and historical reality, before paying attention to her remaining recollections. 1. "Hunters" It's moving to see that the metaphor of hunting, a phenomenon that in my view is in itself horrible enough, also plays a role in the English edition of the book that belongs to the series about the Holocaust, "Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann (p. 9-10). In it, Claude Lanzmann asks a witness, Jan Piwonski: "- Is there still hunting here in the Sobibor forest? - Yes, there are lots of animals of all kinds. - Was there hunting then? - Only manhunts. Some victims tried to escape. But they didn't know the area. (...) There was a time when it was full of screams and gunshots, of dogs barking (...)." For the term "puppies" we can also find a parallel in literature about the Holocaust, namely in the book "Maus" (in two parts) by comic artist Art Spiegelman. In this book the Jews are depicted as mice which are chased by cats, the symbol for the nazi's in this comic. It is remarkable that S uses the word "puppies" rather than referring to animals that fall victims to "recreational" hunting, such as rabbits, hares, foxes, ducks or deer. This may indicate that she is talking about young slaves rather than preys of the hunters. Just like hounds and their young are in a sense the 'prisoners' of hunters and have to do what the hunters want them to, the puppies that S is talking about would be the prisoners of the nazis who would have to do whatever the nazis want them to do. This in turn may indicate that the scene described by S with the hoses might be related to methods of disinfection and not just with gassing. In that case it would concern children who were not immediately gassed by the nazis but who were used for some purpose as slaves. In fact, such young children were (collectively) used for only one purpose, as far as I know: medical experimentation. 2. "Warsaw" At first sight, the name "Warsaw" seems to be completely displaced within S's story, because it is an English name, and because as a Dutch Jew she would not have been deported to Warsaw, but to a concentration camp such as Auschwitz or Sobibor. The English is less problematic than it may seem, as S is -as we have seen already- a gifted, bilingual girl who claims that she also spoke English in her previous life. If we follow the hypothesis that she really recalls a previous life, this is quite plausible for intelligent Dutch people in the 1930s. Strangely enough the fact that she has mentioned Warsaw rather than say Auschwitz even can be taken as a strong argument for the authenticity of the whole story. If these data are not derived from claims from S herself, but rather from Leora's or Ed's imagination, we would never expect such an enormous error as "Warsaw" is if you take it literally. First I have tried to interpret "Warsaw" as a possible symbol of the Holocaust, through the massacre during and after the heroic revolt of the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw in 1943. I supposed that in her previous life S had possibly (illegally) listened to a radio-broadcasting of the allied forces about this revolt and how it was pitilessly struck down by the nazis. To test this hypothesis, I asked my friend historian Pieter van Wezel, M.A., to find out to what extent the revolt of the Jewish ghetto had been known among Dutch Jewish refugees and prisoners during the war. Van Wezel contacted the "Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie" and received the following reply from Hans de Vries, M.A., dated August 24th 1998: "(...) that it is unknown to me if Jews in Dutch camps were aware of the revolt in the ghetto of Warsaw. I have never heard or read anything like it. The revolt was not mentioned by Radio Oranje. Therefore they cannot have learnt anything about the uprising through this channel. It is possible that the revolt was covered by the BBC and that people in Holland heard the program in question. Unfortunately we do not have at our disposal the texts of BBC-programs. It is also known that reports about the uprising penetrated the West via Polish refugees who had arrived in London." Although we cannot entirely exclude the accuracy of my first hypothesis, there is not any evidence that supports it. Why then is S talking about Warsaw? I think of at least two other hypotheses: (1) It is possible that S mixed up a country and its capital city. This is less far-fetched than it may appear. A capital often serves as a symbol for an entire country. For example, foreigners often associate the Netherlands with Amsterdam, in such a way that they think that the (stereotypical) concepts they have of this city are valid for the country as a whole. Another example is New York (or more correctly, Washington D.C.) as a symbol for the United States. A capital is the first thing we learn of a country at school, and sometimes it is the only thing we remember about it later on. In that case we would have to consider Warsaw (as a capital) as a pars pro toto for the whole of Poland. By the word "Warsaw" S would have meant: Poland, which obviously would be correct for most Dutch Jewish victims of the Shoah. (2) The name "Warsaw" might also be connected to a barrack or block in the camp to which S was deported in her previous life. It is known that parts of camps in which a lot a people of a certain location were concentrated were often called after that location. In that case S would have been related in some way to such a part of a concentration camp. Still a third, admittedly less plausible, hypothesis might be that S was really saying something like Saw-war, which after some repetition might be mistaken for Warsaw, and could be based on Sob(i)bor. 3. "There was a place at the Oude Schans where women did their laundry": This was confirmed by Pauli Hofmeester who had heard it from her grandfather and we have no reason to doubt her testimony, though we have not yet verified this detail separately. 4. Details of the house at the Oude Schans: All of these details appear to be at least possible, eventhough it does not seem feasible to verify them separately. The word "voortijl" used by S and unknown to Leora (and not included in any of the Dutch dictionaries I have consulted) may be related to the German "Vorderteil", i.e. front part, or rather a Yiddish word derived from it. The construction of windows from that period was verified by Leora herself and independently from her by a friend of mine, Gerard M., who is interested in pre-war architecture. 5. The tenants of 39, Oude Schans: To establish whether there had lived a Sabine Olthof at the Oude Schans before or during the nazi-occupation, I wrote a letter to the Municipal Archives in Amsterdam. In August 1998 they sent me the following reply: "According to the population register on May 11th 11 1892 the folllowing persons were living at 39, Oude Schans: Johannes Hunsche (born on July 17th 1864), his wife Wilhelmina Johanna Veldkamp (born here on June 19th 1866) and their son Hendricus Johannes Wilhelmus Maria (born on March 25th 1889). At the same address was born on June 4th 1892: Alida Petronella Maria. The address book of 1892/1893 mentions on page 275: "Hunsche, J. Oude Schans 39. In Drugs, Chemicals and Oils and Colours". In the addressbook of 1935/1936 the same J. Hunsche is mentioned as living on 39, Oude Schans. In the address books of 1936/1937 till 1939/1940 no tenants of this residence are mentioned, whereas J. Hunsche exercised his profession in 1936/1937 at the address 4, Westermarkt." There is not any mention of a family Olthof, let alone of a Sabine Olthof. Neither is there any registration of a young woman of 19 or younger at this address. Therefore it can be safely excluded that she was living there officially. She could at best have gone under at his address, but this does not accord with her statement that one day she had returned from the Nieuwmarkt and she had seen that the house was burning. If she considered this house as her own house by that time she cannot have gone under there, as Jews who were hiding obviously were not walking about the streets as if they did not run any risk! This is why I think that the conclusion is inevitable that she really did seem to have memories of a life at the Oude Schans, but that she was mistaken about the house in which she had lived. Assuming S had real memories of a previous life, the explanation for does not have to be very complicated. The beautiful house looks fairly old and it is the first house that draws your attention when you are walking from the Oude Schans to the Korte Koningsstraat, and S can easily have associated it with her memories of that same Oude Schans. 6. The house was burnt by the Nazis: The Municipal Archives have not been able to verify this, but considering the fact that S must have been mistaken about the specific house (i.e. if we assume she may have had real memories of a previous life), it seems more likely that the mention of the "restoration" of the house in 1941, was simply related to a restoration of the old building because of its cultural and historical value. Furthermore, it is strange that the Nazis would have burnt a house in which nobody was living anymore and in which nobody was running a business. I mean, who were they trying to hit in that case? It would seem even stranger that subsequently they took the effort of restoring the building and even located a sign to indicate this. 7. Her name was something like Sabine Olthof: The name "Sabine Olthof" is a name that from a historical point of view may certainly have been authentic, but unfortunately, as such it cannot be found in the Municipal Archives. Not one of the names Sabine Althof and Sabine Althoff or Sabine Olthof and Sabine Olthoff are registered in the so called "municipal basic administration personal data" of the Register Amsterdam, Bureau Civil Affairs, as the Archives wrote to me on March 30th 1998. Nor does the name appear in "In Memoriam", an authoritative, though incomplete list of Dutch-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The same can be said about an Internet-site about "Häftlingspersonalbogen" of the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Searching for names on the list in "In Memoriam" that looked or sounded a bit like Sabine Olthof, I found as the name closest to it Amalia Regina Colthof. However, this girl did not live at the Oude Schans, but at Vechtstraat 63III, according to a letter of the National Institute of War Documentation dated March 26th 1998. More importantly, this Amalia Regina Colthof was only 13 when she died in 1943. The "Sabine Olthof" who S possibly has been in her previous life cannot be traced until now. This does not imply that there never was a person by that name, but I find it more reasonable to assume that S could not remember her name very well (assuming of course that she may indeed have recalled her previous life) or that Leora misunderstood her when she mentioned her name. 8. "All flew into the sky": In the boek "Kind in Auschwitz" there is a drawing of a procedure during which prisoners were sprayed with hoses with a disinfectant. This concerned a chemical spray after the prisoners had been exposed to a shower. On the other hand the words "all flew into the sky" remind us in themselves of a massacre of children through gassing. It appears as if S had mixed up two images of experiences that as far as fear and humiliation are concerned, do resemble each other quite a lot: a disinfection procedure and a gassing. It is remarkable that something similar can be seen in the movie "Schindler's List" by Steven Spielberg. A group of female "Schindler-Jews" had been deported to Auschwitz 'by accident' and after they had arrived, they were taken to a shower-room, in which the women expected to be gassed immediately. Contrary to their expectations, it was just a "hygienical" measure, similar to the chemical disinfection, namely a real shower. The words "they all flew into the sky" can be interpreted in two very different ways: (1) as a reference to a clairvoyant perception by S (in her previous life) of the children's souls leaving their bodies when they died. This perception may have taken place while S was still alive or else after her own death, in an intermediate period between her death and her present life. (2) as a reference to expressions commonly used during the infernal Holocaust. For example, it was common to speak of a "Himmelfahrtsweg", a reference to the Ascension of Jesus, in other words a cynical, pseudo-religious description of death. It also reminds us of the process of cremation after gassing, during which the smoke of the bodies rose up to the sky. For instance, 'Hentschel the Moon', a German Kommandoführer from the novel "Daniella" by Ka-tsetnik 135633 when he came to select girls (forced labourers) for the crematorium: " To the blue sky, mein Liebchen. There they are building a road for you." (p. 153) 9. Somebody whom S calls "Blokker", prepared her for her death: It is unclear what S meant with this person "Blokker". In "In Memoriam" there is no mention of anyone called "Blokker", although similar names are registered in it, such as "Bakker", "Blok", or "Bloch". This would imply that if Blokker was really somebody's surname, he was not from Holland, or at least he was not registered as a Dutch victim. Another possibility is mentioned by a person calling himself "Simon the Yid", on a Kabbalah-Forum on the Internet. He writes to me that the statements in question may refer to some kind of angel that came to get S after her death and explains that souls who were victims of the Shoah would possess a privileged position according to present-day Kabbalists. However, a weakness of this hypothesis is that Simon the Yid cannot explain the term "Blokker" in this context. Another weak point is that it would be strange if an angel would have to explain to S how she should leave her body. In the literature about Near-Death Experiences there is no other instance of such an instruction as far as I know. Leaving the body is -if we take NDEs seriously-, more of a natural process that happens spontaneously and for which no preparation is needed as a technique. 'Beings of Light' guide the person declared clinically dead into another world of Light rather than helping that person to leave his or her body, as this is something that occurs automatically after the body's death. For this reason I find it more plausible (assuming the possibility that S was indeed recalling a previous life) that Blokker was no angel, but a historical character that was known by a name that at least resembles "Blokker". He might have been somebody who had a strong interest in the occult, and possible the Kabbalah, and he might have been someone who had experimented with out-of-body experiences or astral projection. Naturally, I have no idea what historical person might apply for this, but I do find it remarkable that the word "Blokker" resembles somewhat the word "Blockälteste", the term for a prisoner who was responsible for the order in a so called "Block" of a concentration camp. Blockälteste were privileged prisoners and it is well imaginable that some of them were cultured Jews with occult or even mystical interests. As fas as I know, Blockälteste were not particularly known for their kindness, but there is no doubt that there have been exceptions and many of them had their moments of weakness when they succumbed to momentary urges of compassion and humanity. For instance the murderer Pjotr in "Moni" by Ka-Tsetnik 135633 said to a young "piepel" (boy prostitute): "You, Moni, you are an 'alter Lagerhase' (old inmate). That's what I like. Take it from me, Moni, that I am your last friend in Auschwitz." (p. 130). 10. Fear of doctors and of men in general: If we relate these fears to a possible previous life ended in a death camp, this means that S may have been treated harshly by men in general, plausibly by the SS at the camp, and by physicians in particular, probably the camp doctors. We know that medical doctors played a crucial role in Auschwitz. They took part in almost all the selections, decided about life and death of the patients in the medical blocks and killed the weakened patients with a phenol-injection. They also used the plentiful "human experimental material" in Block 10. Female forced labourers were sometimes sterilized by them in a primitive fashion. 11. Remarkable interests in diseases and pathology: Thinking of the Holocaust, and assuming the possibility that S had real memories of a previous life, we may connect these interests very well to her fear of doctors and alsof to the ubiquitous death in the death camps. Camp doctors such as Dr. Mengele were, just like S still is today, strongly interested in genetics and in this respect Mengele conducted a lot of very cruel experiments on twins. In Auschwitz there were entire archives of body parts of murdered prisoners. Anyone who was not gassed immediately, was confronted by the corpses very soon. Now, within the psychoanalytical literature we know the phenomenon of "identification with the aggressor", a defense-mechanism that implies an identification with someone who is hurting the person emotionally and/or physically. A well-known example of this is the Stockholm-syndrom of hostages who after a while felt sympathy for and identified with the personality and ideology of the criminals that held them hostage. A camp doctor such as Mengele offered a fertile background for such a morbid identification with the aggressor, because his personality was very ambiguous and confusing. He could be very nice to prisoners but he always remained extremely dangerous for them. Twins often called him 'Uncle Pepi' and other twins recall how Mengele gave them sweets and took them for a ride in his car, which amounted to 'a ride with Uncle Pepi, to the gas chamber.' Furthermore, there was a so called "Sonderkommando" in Auschwitz, consisting of a number of prisoners that were used by the nazis as assistants during the extermination of their victims. One of the people in this Sonderkomando was the Hungarian physician Miklos Nyiszli, about whom Primo Levi writes: "He was a renowned pathologist [sic], expert at autopsies, and the medical director of the SS in Birkenau, chosen by Mengele". S's birthmark In 1997 Dr Ian Stevenson was finally able to publish his enormously important books on birthmarks and birth defects related to the mode of death in the previous life. In the first part of the series he deals with the birthmarks. If we wish to relate S's birthmarks, and especially the one on her forehead, to her death in the life during the Holocaust, we cannot escape the impression that in that case she must have been shot. The birthmark is round and if somebody is shot through the head on that spot, chances are very high that he will die from it. S herself found this hypothesis about her "headlight" absurd, when I mentioned it in her presence in August 1998. If we start from the idea that S was exposed to medical experiments or forced labour, we might first think that instead of being gassed she would have been shot, as that would have been the normal procedure in such cases. However, if we are talking about medical experiments this is incorrect as far as I have found out, because the human guinea-pigs usually got a lethal injection. It could have been possible for forced labourers however. For example, Richard Glazar, a survivor of Treblinka (Shoah, p. 120/121) states that apart from gas chambers there also was an infirmary in which the elderly and the sick were shot. He adds: "The 'infirmary' was also for us, the Treblinka slaves, the last stop. Not the gas chamber. We always ended up in the 'infirmary'". However, this shooting usually concerned a shot through the neck and not a shot through the forehead. In this connection we should not forget that the method of gassing was designed among other reasons for the morale of the "common" executioners, i.e. the soldiers who had to execute prisoners. A shot through the neck is more confronting than gassing, but it still is less shocking than an execution during which you look the prisoner in the eyes. Thus, only two plausible hypotheses seem to remain for a possible relationship between the birthmark and the cause of death: (1) She was shot in her head and not in her neck, because the latter had become impossible as she was lying already on her back dying, in the gas chamber. In that case it would have been an act of mercy, to "finish her off". (I've been told by someone who is well read in this area that this seems quite improbable.) (2) She was shot in the head, because she resisted the "hunters". In that case it could have been an unannounced execution, a short moment of resistance immediately followed by a lethal shot through the forehead. The first hypothesis accords with Leora's interpretation who still believes that S was gassed in her previous life. Leora's own experiences Leora has had two experiences herself that seem connected to the Holocaust and therefore also to S's memories of it. Both seem to be related to classical deja-vu experiences and the first one seems to have been taken from a fairytale. The first experience concerned a necklace. When a friend of Leora's, Pauli, was 12 years old (around 1968) she was walking along the flee market in Amsterdam with her grandfather. All of a sudden an old man addressed Pauli while offering her a necklace with the star of David, saying: This is for you, to guard but not to keep. If time is ripe you will know whom you must give it to. After he had said those words, the old man disappeared again into the multitude. Naturally, Pauli was very astonished but she did as the old man told her to. When she was sixteen she went to live on her own and from then she moved to about 10 different addresses but she always made sure that the necklace was not lost. Pauli sometimes hung the necklace around her own neck, but she always realized that it did not belong to her. A few months after Pauli and Leora became friends with each other (in the nineties) as Leora and S were visiting her, Pauli told S's mother: "Oh, I have found it again. I think it is meant for you or for S!". Pauli went into her bedroom and asked S to join her. She showed her the star of David but S just said: "Oh!" Pauli said to Leora: "Then it must be for you!" As Leora accepted Pauli's gift it was as if the thought "I finally got it back" shouted through her head. Both Pauli and Leora felt moved and surprised. This experience would suggest that destiny or providence reunited Leora with a necklace she had owned in a previous life and which is directly related to Judaism and even the Holocaust, the star of David having been abused as a hateful instrument to mark Jewish people. A second experience seems to be directly related to the first one. After Leora had just returned from the States she had rented a room at a friend's place in Hoorn (The Netherlands). One day, this friend had given a party and when Leora came back from Amsterdam she saw that the whole house was full of people. She tried to see who was there and she saw a man sitting on the couch who happened to look at her. They had never met in this life but it was as if they both zoomed in to each other. As far as Leora could tell, everbody in the room stopped talking. A few moments later Leora had talked to the kitchen and the man stood up and walked over to her. They both continued staring at each other, until he raised his left hand and lay it on the top of her head, stroke her cheeks and finally held his hand under her chin. This felt very natural as if she had experienced it many times before. While he was stroking her cheek, Leora said: "It's been such a long time!". He smiled, nodded and sat down again, asking her through gestures to come and sit next to him. It was the beginning of a passionate love affair and they could not bear being separated from each other. The man in question, G., was German. His father had been a soldier during the war and G. was raised with the idea that the Holocaust was a farce and a lie. This hurt Leora and after a while she realized that they could not stay together in this life. This account is less unique than it may seem. Reb Gershom mentions persons who appear to have been Jews in their previous lives (during the Holocaust) and who in this life wanted to remain incognito by choosing a non-Jewish or even antisemitic family for their next incarnation. In his view, this seems to be motivated by an urge not to draw attention within a non-Jewish society and therefore also not to run any risk anymore on this point. This kind of souls of persecuted Jews would thus be a bit similar to Spanish Jews (the "conversos") who assimilated to the Roman-Catholic majority in Spain and who did anything so that they would not be recognized as Jews, eventhough many of them were still persecuted as 'marranos' (swines). Many of their descendants remain unaware of the background of their family. II. Intermediate state between the life during the Holocaust and the present incarnation S seems to have had memories of two earthly incarnations and also memories of two intermission periods (MIPS) between such a life and the next incarnation. Concerning the intermediate state between her life during the Shoah and the present life in which she is known as S, she stated that (in another world) there were various 'villages' (sic). Of a few of those villages she mentioned the name. Originally these were five villages which apparently had a Hebrew name, and one village with a Yiddish name. These locations were called respectively: Kfar-El, Ha-Bina, Na'iva, K'vananot Midierot, Yachasim Kvanim, and Adenberg. Apparently, Kfar-El was the most important village, becaus Ha-Bina and Na'iva were part of this place. When S came to Kfar-El, a lot of other Jews also arrived there. She stated that all of them had been killed by the 'hunters'. Leora identified Kfar-El through her knowledge of modern Ivrit as 'village of God', although she had never heard this word in Israel. S was the first who used this word in her presence. About Ha-Bina and Na'iva, S stated that all spiritual beings came from Ha-Bina. It may seem that spiritual beings came from Na'iva because of the ('topographical') location of this place. Ha-Bina is something of a scary place because it is located in another solar system (sic). There is also a planet that is called Ha-Bina (sic). The spiritual beings speak a different language, a language nobody on earth knows. The spiritual beings try to contact us and they can do so by 'focussing' (sic). They keep their hands up and look between their fingers to see us. In Hebrew, Yachasim means something like relations or contacts. Several sources told me kvanim (plural of kavanah) would mean intention, devotion or goal. According to my own information, kvanim has a kabbalistic meaning, namely sacred intentions which accompany the kabbalistic thoughts during the mere fulfillment of precepts or prayer (Please note that apart from a few words, I personally have no knowledge of Hebrew and welcome any corrections. My very limited knowledge is derived from information on websites). However, I have also found that the usual plural would be kavanot (rather than k'vananot). Midierot reminds one of the word Medurot or Midurot, which means bonfires, including bonfires in a religious context. The word "Na'iva" could not be traced by Leora, though an association with the English word 'naive' can hardly be suppressed. There is also a name Hebrew Nativa which occurs in combination with a religious text. As I soon found out myself that "Ha-Bina" is identical to the Hebrew word "Binah", one of the manifestations of God according to Kabbalah, I decided to place a call on a Kabbalah Forum on the Internet for interpretations of these statements made by S about an intermission period. The person who called himself Simon the Yid, responded to this call writing among other things that according to the Kaballah just as there are many different towns, villages and countries in this word there are also many towns, villages and countries in the next world. Everything we know down here, also exists up there. He also stressed that Ha Binah means "the understanding", and interestingly enough it would often refer to the next world. Simon the Yid also connects what S says about the "good spiritual beings" and kabbalistic views on the destiny of the victims of the Holocaust after their death. He told me that according to Kabbalah if somebody dies destructive angels appear to torture the soul because of the sins he has committed, but that there also are exceptions, for example if the person in question was just, if he showed remorse or if he had done one or more great things in his life. In such cases he will have angels created (sic) through his good deeds who will protect him against the destructive angels. By the way, S's memories of words or images that indicate a link to the Kabbalah naturally should not be confused with an infallible knowledge (or proof) of Kabbalistic doctrines. Then, S also mentioned the place Adenberg which she located in Warsaw which would mean -if we take Simon the Yid seriously on this point- in the Warsaw at another side parallel to the earthly Warsaw. This was a place to write things down about the living. If we apply my hypothesis about Warsaw as a word for Poland, this might mean that in the earthly Poland there had been a place called Adenberg. However, until now I have not been able to find this name. It is well known on the other hand that Eastern European Jewish "shtetl"s (village communities) normally had both a Slavic and at the same time a Yiddish name and it is therefore well imaginable that a village which nowadays only has a Polish name before the Holocaust also used to have a Yiddish name. For this reason I have tried to find out if there is a Yiddish word that sounds like Adenberg (or Edenberg, as Leora used the English spelling when she wrote down what S said about this). I searched the Internet which led to the following results: A list of Polish-Yiddish surnames included the names "Ajdenberg", "Eidenberg" and "Ejdenberg". Leora herself also sees a symbolical link with the bible, "Aden" or "Eden" referring to the Garden of Eden, referred to by the prophet Ezechiel as Mount Eden. But even in that case the connection to authentic Yiddish (or German) words can hardly be overlooked. More recent additions Intrigued by the remarkable correspondences between S's statements about another world between her former and present incarnation, I decided to ask her some additional questions about this topic. The main additions supplied by S in 1998 are: - Concerning the word "Adonai" (Lord). S saw this as just a word but added that the one who is meant by it sometimes watches over people. "Some people have seen him. I don't believe I have seen him. He owns a certain magic." If she dreams about the other world, the dreams are very "real", "as if I'm there." - S mentioned yet another Hebrew name of a place, namely "V'anim Ka'im". This was a very well known royal house, where a lot of people came to eat. There was a kind of a dining table with about 40 chairs. The interior of the house looked very big, but the exterior was very small. Because people came to eat there, you thought that it was a place to eat. Because people came to eat there through the ages and probably still do. You did not have to go there, but people who could not find food went there. They were more or less "taken care of". It was a very big house with a medieval shape and with a kind of fore and hind yard, but not really, they were at a place where people discussed things. Some people thought that the house was haunted, because in the past people had lived in it and they had died very young. S thought that they were buried under the house. That's why they thought the house was haunted. Until now I have not been able to find any specific links with Kabbalistic legends or traditions. On the other hand, sharing a meal is a well-known tradition for christians referring to the Last Supper, which in turn is directly related to the Jewish Pesach-Celebration. In the Judeo-Christian tradition (and in other traditions as well by the way) there is a clear connection between sharing a meal and participating in spiritual rituals. The hungry could in this respect be considered as souls craving for spiritual nourishment. The hereafter and spirits In 1998, S had some problems with sleeping in her own bed. She told Leora why: "There are spirits who come to me and who try to take me with them. They are jealous because I have made it. I think that they are evil spirits. These spirits get the chance of coming back, but they may only stay alive until they're born or until they are a few years old. They have to do this several times." Leora explained her that if these spirits were strong enough, they would have taken her with them when she was still very young, but because S was so strong, they could not do so. Leora told S was ten times stronger than all those spirits taken together. This solved the problem for her, and one of their cats, Shaz, slept with her from that time onwards to protect her. Also, Leora would beat the spirits up (sic) if they would try to hurt S. She felt better after that and kept one cat with her to protect her during the night. During the first half of 1998, Leora wrote to me that she had the feeling that the ghosts or spirits bothered her less and less, though sometimes she did seem to be attacked again. It was as if they had decided that they were not going to give up and that they would try to attack her again. About this life S states: "Kfar El chose us (sic) to choose the planet where we wanted to go and that is why we are here. With 'us' I mean the people from Kfar El and maybe even Jewish people." Discussion Here, S implicitly presents something of a karma-theory about "evil spirits". As we have seen, these spirits would get a chance to come back, but they are only allowed to stay alive until their birth or until they are a few years old. They had to do this a few times. We can formulate two hypotheses about this statement, assuming that it is more than just fantasy. Either it concerns a doctrine or interpretation by S that can be related to her possible kabbalistic past or she is referring to a fact. Unfortunately, on the basis of these data alone we cannot determine which hypothesis applies here. To be able to do so we need to get a corroboration (or falsification) of S's statements about this point by comparable statements of other children who remember previous lives. III. Possible life during the reign of the Spanish Inquisition From the very beginning that Leora and I got in touch with each other, I knew that S had not only talked about the Holocaust but also about a life in what she called "Macchu Picchu", in the high and low pampas (sic). She claimed that she had been choked to death and that she had been 60 years when she died in 1638. Leora told me that the first statement about a previous life made by S was a statement about this life. When S was about two years old she was playing with the cats in the living room. One of these cats was called Banz. S went into the kitchen where Leora was standing and she said without any apparent reason: "Banz used to say Macchu Picchu." As Leora looked at her, S repeated: "Banz used to say Macchu Picchu". Leora thought: "How on earth can she know anything about Macchu Picchu?". Leora states that there was another occasion on which Macchu Picchu layed an important role. She had noted hat S did not want to pull a sweater or t-shirt over her head and she asked her why. S told her she had been strangled in Macchu Picchu and she showed her how, by pressing her hands and her thumbs on her adam's apple. Leora asked her how old she had been and she answered "60 years". Leora asked her if she wanted to act as if he was a turtle and this is how the problem was solved. About the circumstances of her death S also told Leora that there had been "beams" against the ceiling in Macchu Picchu. To be honest, at first I paid little attention to these statements about Macchu Picchu, as I thought that they were probably based on fantasy. This was motivated also by two major errors that the statements seemed to contain: (1) "Macchu Picchu" (or rather the ruin known by that name that was found at this geographical location) was only discovered in the 20th century. (2) There are no pampas in Peru, but only in Argentina, or so I thought. Such considerations made me less interested in these statements than in S's story about experiences during the Shoah. My attitude was changed however when I thought about a place in the afterlife that according to S had been located in "Macchu Picchu", meaning that it was connected to this earthly place. Just as in the case of Warsaw, S had mentioned a name that was connected to a period she had experienced after her life in "Macchu Picchu". The name in question sounded as "Rilliyanta", English spelling. There was a woman called "Rilliyanta dela Salamon", or at least this is what Leora had understood. In that other world Rilliyanta dela Salamon wrote down things for Jews and Christians, according to S. This strange name immediately reminded me of a well-known medieval manual for magicians called in Spanish "Clavi�culas de Salomon", which literally means "Little keys of Solomon" and is -probably erroneously- attributed to the biblical king Solomon. By the way, the Sephardic Jews used both Salamon and Salomon as (equivalent) personal names. That's why I concentrated on the word Rilliyanta. I concluded that if there existed a Spanish word that sounded like what Leora had written down as rilliyanta it would have been releyenta or releyente. Releyenta de la Salomon? After I reconstructed the word that was written down as "rilliyanta", I realized that if my reconstruction was going to make any sense, something between "de la" and "Salamon" had been omitted by S, as "la" is a feminine article and Salomon is a masculine noun in Spanish. The omitted word would in that case have to be a feminine noun. This could be something like "clavícula", but this word is usually used in the plural, so it does not seem probable. It seems more plausible that it would be something like the Spanish word "sabiduri�a", meaning wisdom. For Jews and Christians, Solomon is the main biblical representative of wisdom. But what about "releyenta" or "releyente" then? For someone who knows Spanish like myself the word reminds you of "leyente", which means reader, derived from the Spanish verb "leer"(to read). Is there a verb "releer"? Yes there is, and it is a normal verb which can mean "to reread", "to read again", "to read over" or "to reread aloud". It is important to realize that "releyente" can be logically derived from "releer", just like "leyente" from "leer", but the word does not appear in any of the dictionaries that I have consulted at the department of Spanish Linguistics and Literature at the University Library of the Catholic University of Nijmegen. This means that it can be excluded with a high degree of probability that Leora, let alone S herself, got acquainted with this word through normal means! The main linguistic authority in the Spanish speaking world, the so called Real Academia Española confirmed that the derivation of releyente from the verb "releer" is grammatically correct (in July 2002). In March 2005 the word was used on an Argentinian website in Spanish, i.e. completely independently from S's case. S mentions the registration of things for Jews and Christians. The word "releyenta/e" precisely indicates someone who is (silently or aloud) rereading things that have been written down. Besides, she claims that she had been choked to death and this clearly has to be related to "releyenta/e de la Salomon". If we start from the plausible hypothesis that it is something to do with "heretical", occult or mystical practices, we have to see whether there has been a well-known occult or mystical tradition of a historical or symbolical woman who is reading something over or rereading something aloud that is connected to the wisdom of Solomon. I was unaware of any historical woman that would fulfill these conditions and I have not come across any such woman in books about the history of occult and esoterical currents. Seen as a symbol, the image of the "releyenta/e de la (sabiduría de) Salomón" turned out to be a lot more meaningful than I had guessed. The image of a woman reading a book or scroll of wisdom reminded me of the Highpriestess of the contemporary Tarot, sometimes called the Popess. This is because the High Priestess is often depicted with a book or scrole on her lap and within the whole tradition of the Tarot she symbolized some kind of higher or intuitive wisdom. According to some sources, this card also corresponds to the concept of the Holy Spirit, or Shekhina, who is female within Jewish tradition. Within certain interpretations, the book on her lap is seen as a symbol of what the theosophists call the "Akasha-cronicles", in which everybody's actions would be written down, as in a Book of Life. Searching for an even more direct link between "releyenta de la Salomón" and the image of the Highpriestess I stumbled upon the so called Rider-Waite version of the Tarot. In this Tarot the Highpriestess is depicted sitting between two pillars with the Torah on her lap. On the two pillars we read the names of "Boaz" and "Jachin". These names are none other than the names of the pillars which according to tradition stood at the entrance of the temple of Solomon. They also play a part in the occult movement of Freemasonry (that was founded only in 1727, but which did have predecessors such as the Rosicrucians and before them the Templarians) who saw the temple of Solomon as a symbol of a building of supernatural quality. It was in a literal or symbolical sense the dream of Western occultists, such as the Freemasons I had just mentioned, to reconstruct this temple. In the literal sense there are some extremist Israelis who want to do the same today, at the expense of the Mosque built on the (possible) remnants of the temple. Furthermore, "Boaz" and "Jachin" are sometimes called "the pillars of Kabbalah". This can even be interpreted in such a way that the whole card of the Highpriestess may be seen as a symbol of Kabbalah itself. Kabbalah is sometimes defined as "the Esoteric Understanding of the Torah", lying on the lap of the Rider-Waite version of the Highpriestess. The late Dr. Willem Zuidema, author of a book about the Kabbalah, called me after I had completed this reconstruction saying that in the historical temple of Solomon there had been a "forecourt" for women. The wife of the Highpriest of the temple, was also called Highpriestess. Thus, the link with some versions of the Tarot had become very strong indeed. Furthermore, according to Zuidema, the connection with the temple indicates that S in this life would have been related to the tribe of the so called Kohanim, i.e. Jewish priests. The offspring of this tribe can still be recognized by names such Cohen, Kahn or Kuhn. This reconstruction may seem far-fetched to some, and possibly even "kabbalistic" (in the pejorative sense of this word), but in my view the correspondences can hardly be ascribed to nothing more than mere coincidence. How is it possible for an English-speaking girl of about three to make up a name which apparently shows such a strong connection to the symbolism of the Highpriestess as found in some versions of the Tarot? A critic of the case of S has recently stated that the specific symbolism displayed in the Rider-Waite Tarot is very recent. Therefore, it can never have been used during the 17th Century. However, even if this true (and it is not at all obvious that it is, as the Tarot may have been influenced by occult symbolism from the beginning) my reference to the Tarot is not a goal in itself. I just use it to show that the image of the "Rilliyanta dela Salamon" used by S may be connected to traditional symbolism shown in some versions of the Tarot and inspired by the Kabbalah. If nothing else, that alone is quite remarkable. Addition from October 2007 Roman Gruijters MA is an expert on Jewish traditions. He comments on the symbolism of a woman who's re-reading a holy scripture as follows: "Within Jewish tradition, it is common practice to re-read a handwritten Tanach/Thora scrole, meant for worship service in the synagogue. The Torah is so sacred that as soon as one single letter or iota is misplaced, the whole Torah scrole ought to be destroyed and burnt. The synagogue is desacrated whenever such an error is made. [Compare: Matot: The Importance of Re-Reading Torah By Rabbi Richard Hirsh]. Within Jewish mysticism, Sophia represents the female aspect of G'd. It leads back to biblical scriptures, more specifically to Jewish and early Christian wisdom literature, such as Solomon's Wisdom. Apart from a male image of God we also see the figure of Lady Sophia emerge, as a personification of God's wisdom (Hebrew: Chokma, Greek: Sophia). Although Sophia is not pictured as a goddess next to the biblical God JHWH - otherwise she would amount to a challenge to Judeo-Christian monotheism - the influence of surrounding cults of female deities cannot be denied. This might also explain the use of a feminine form in relation to the re-reading of the Wisdom of Solomon." Peru? My next step involved localizing the possible strangling of S in a Spanish-speaking country. The highlands seem to indicate the Andes and as in the case of Warsaw it seems that she may have encountered the name in this (or even her previous) life and used it as a suitable label for old memories. If we allow such an interpretation, we will admit it is plausible that it involves a country such as Peru, or at any rate a country in the Andes. Have there been any executions of Jews in the Seventeenth Century, presumably by the Spanish Inquisition? I was led to ask this question by S's declaration that Rilliyanta was writing things down for Jews and Christians and by her reference to Solomon. After all if she was referring to indigenous people such as the Incas, why should she have mentioned Jews? By the way, it is known that the indigenous victims of the persecution of the Catholic conquistadores have sometimes compared themselves with Jews and vice versa. Pizarro had the Inca Atahualpa strangled in 1533. Much to my (partly unpleasant) surprise it turned out that there had indeed been executions of Jewish convicts in the 17th Century. The same advisor I had consulted in the case of 'Warsaw', historian Pieter van Wezel, found out that according to a Jewish encyclopedia in January of 1639 there was a mass execution of 10 Jews through burning. To be more precise, this concerned a so called auto-da-fe of 23rd January 1639 in which no less than 63 Jews were condemned, ten of whom to the stake. One of them was called Manuel Bautista Pérez, known to have been the richest man in Peru of that period, and after his death the Inquisition confiscated nothing short of the equivalent of one million US dollars. Another of the victims was Francisco Maldonado de Silva, a surgeon, poet and philosopher who before his execution had been incarcerated in a dungeon for more than 12 years. This type of trials usually aimed at people who were found guilty of "judaizante" practices, which means at Jews who despite their outward conversion to Catholicism secretly stuck to their own faith and sometimes even did their best to propagate it among other people. More specific information about the Inquisition in Lima is supplied by an article that is quoted by an internet-site from Peru, having originally appeared in "Revista Signos de Vida, no. 3, March 1997", pages 34 and 35. Through this article we find out that the Inquisition at Lima was already created by King Philip II in 1569 and that it became operative in 1570. An enormous area was dominated by the sphere of influence of this Inquisition, comprising what is now Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. About 1500 persons were convicted in Lima, although most of them were only condemned to pay a fine or to say prayers, etc. During the centuries the Holy Inquisition was active at Lima only 32 death penalties were issued, among which there were 16 cases in which the prisoner was to be burnt at the stake, and 16 cases of "garrote" or strangling pole, used before the victim's body would be burnt anyway. It is therefore well conceivable that if S's memories really refer to this period and setting, she is alluding to the execution of a Jew who was first strangled after which his or her body was burnt at the stake. According to Robbins, in several countries the "humane" usage of the garrote in combination with burning was common (Robbins, 1981, p. 179). Reconstruction If we add all this up, we get the impression that S may have recalled a life during the 17th Century as a Jewish woman or (perhaps more plausibly) man who was in some way aware of the Kabbalah and who was executed on behalf of the Holy Inquisition at Lima. Of course this is a matter of reconstruction, and not of solid proof, but I think such speculative reconstruction may to a certain extent be defended as long as we accept that there is already sufficient evidence for the reincarnation hypothesis for classical Stevensonian solved Cases of the Reincarnation Type. What about the beams at the ceiling, which S had described as something connected to her death? Is she perhaps describing her own house, or what seems more likely, the building in which she was convicted or executed? I happen to know that beams are widely used in Spanish architecture. This was also the case in the period we are talking about here. There are many public buildings which have wooden beams at the ceiling, such as the aula of the ancient University of Salamanca. Possible links between S's account about Macchu Picchu and the historical persecution of Jews in Peru 1. Macchu Picchu. Just like in the case of Warsaw this word may be something she had encountered either in this life or in a former incarnation and that she has associated with Peru as a pars pro toto. 2. S mentions "pampas". These turned out -against my own expectations- to exist in Peru as well. Pampa is a quechua word which means 'treeless plain' in all of South-America. There even are several places in Peru which bear a name including the word pampa. In the Netherlands 'pampa' is almost exclusively associated with Argentina (and the gauchos). 3. She was killed in 1638. In January of 1639, one month after the year 1638 there was a mass execution of Jews. It is well conceivable that all of the prisoners were arrested in 1638 or before. 4. Releyenta/e de la Salomon. These words (as I have reconstructed them) and the traditions which clearly seem to be linked to it can, in my view, safely be regarded as completely unknown to Leora. 5. For Jews and Christians. In those days non-Jewish occult systems had adopted Kabbalistic elements in their doctrines, such as that of the Rosicrucians. 6. She was strangled. This may in principle be linked to the mass execution of 1639, as strangulation via the garrote was an official means of execution in half of the death penalties at Lima. 7. Beams against the ceiling. Plausible for Spanish buildings from the 17th Century. In 2002 I discovered a picture at the site of the Museum of the Peruvian Inquisition, of the so called "Sala de Audiencias" which shows beams at the ceiling. Despite these remarkable connections, my reconstruction might still be partly or even totally wrong and I am well aware of this. I certainly would not want to claim that my reconstruction is infallible. There may be a better interpretation of her remarks, for example that it refers to a murder rather than an execution or that it concerns an Amerindian person connected somehow to the culture that built Macchu Picchu. However, I do believe the reconstruction does in itself deserve to be taken quite seriously. That is also the reason why I have limited myself to this possible reconstruction of this part of S's claimed memories in my summary of the case in my Dutch book on reincarnation research (Rivas, 2000). Unless we want to be closed-minded 'skeptics', it is in my view not at all 'obvious' that this interpretation is wrong. All in all, we may safely conclude that her remarks can in principle certainly be rationally interpreted as being statements about memories rather than just fantasies. IV. General discussion The case of S is not exactly one of the most transparant "Cases of the Reincarnation Type" ever. Nevertheless, we can firmly exclude fraud in this case. Leora Simpson-Baikie-Rosner, S's mother, is the main source of data in the case and it is clear that she has not made them up for the sake of publicity. S's "Book" already existed years before there had been any kind of scholarly investigation into S's memories. If Leora had been looking for publicity she would have actively sought contact with journalists or researchers and she would not have waited until I happened to get in touch with her. An interpretation which at first sight seems to be a lot more plausible is that Leora did not commit any conscious fraud but that she was "guilty" nonetheless of a type of self-deception. In that case, S's statements would have directly or indirectly derived from Leora herself. She would have misquoted her daughter in many respects or she would have unconsciously given her information that S would have "spontaneously" presented later on. What seems to corroborate this hypothesis is that both Leora and her husband Ed have Jewish roots and both of them also feel related to the victims of the Shoah. Leora had also read about the concept of reincarnation through the works of Edgar Cayce. Even so, we have more arguments against than in favour of this second "skeptical" hypothesis. More than anything, it does not explain the obvious "errors" in S's story, especially her mentioning Warsaw or Macchu Picchu. Why should Leora, if she would have been looking for a miracle that would convince herself, also have written down the first word (Warsaw), whereas as an educated Jewish woman she knew that there had not been any gas chambers in Warsaw so that S could not have been gassed there in her previous life? Strangely enough it is precisely such an error combined with the symbolic language used by S that makes the hypothesis very implausible for me. If Leora wanted to deceive herself (and her environment), she probably would have made up a much more "earthy", less symbolical story without any such strange errors in it. Besides, in her notes about the statements S made concerning the house she would have lived in, Leora herself writes: '9 stories (apparently incorrect)'. This constitutes written evidence for the fact that she was aware of apparent errors in S's story. Apart from this, we also have the testimony of Pauli Hofmeester which shows that S really did make spontaneous and relevant remarks about what she experienced as a previous life. Skeptics might wish to hold that all the incorrect statements were indeed spontaneous remarks made by S, but that the correct statements (for example the Kabbalistic names for places in the afterlife) were created by Leora herself. However, Pauli Hofmeester's testimony cannot be reconciled with this hypothesis. Also, it would require us to believe that Leora was not 'hallucinating' correct statements from her daughter whenever S would say something which appeared to be wrong. Apart from the purely speculative nature of ascribing hallucinations to Leora (we have no evidence for her doing so) this clearly seems to ask too much from anyone's imagination. Therefore, it seems obvious that S was indeed talking about what she herself experienced as a previous life, and Leora simply appears to have recorded all of her statements, i.e. both the 'incorrect' and 'correct' ones. A third skeptical hypothesis reads that Leora would indeed conscientiously have written down everything S had told her, but that S herself had unconsciously assimilated information about the past made available to her, and used that information for the fabrication of a fantastic story about a period before she had been born. However, there are certain elements in the story as a whole which in my view cannot be satisfactorily explained by this so called 'cryptomnesia'- hypothesis, such as: (1) How can a girl of about three, how ever gifted she may be, associate the Holocaust with hunters of people, if we must assume that neither of these phenomena were known to her in this life? For instance, it is very unlikely that her parents would not have taken precautions to prevent her from seeing graphic images of man hunts during the Shoah. (2) S could not normally know anything about women doing the laundry at the Oude Schans. If this had been common knowledge all along, Pauli would never been struck by statements about it. (3) The same can be said for the strangely adequate Hebrew terms S used when referring to the hereafter. Although Leora does speak Ivrit, this can hardly be said of S. How then can S be expected to use such specific words in a relevant manner without having heard any of them from her parents? Some of the words such as Ha Binah were even unknown to Leora -they were identified through my own investigations- and their usage seems esoterical, quite far removed from everyday modern Hebrew. Besides, several of these words are used in a way which is consistent with Kabbalistic doctrines which were obviously never taught to S in this life when she used the words. (4) We can also safely exclude a normal hypothesis for the relevant term 'releyenta' or 'releyente' reconstructed by myself, i.e. as long as we take my reconstruction seriously. This means, in my view, that we have to look at parapsychological hypotheses for the case of S: (1) Telepathy As Leora and everybody else within S's immediate environment were unaware of the accuracy of the correctness and relevance of certain statements of S we can exclude telepathy as a hypothesis for the paranormal elements within her statements. (2) Clairvoyance The first problem with the hypothesis of clairvoyance in this case is that S did not just utter a few facts about somebody's life, but that she also clearly identifies with the life in question. In the case of "Macchu Picchu", in other words the possible Peruvian life, this was linked to a fear of choking. A morbid interest for pathology and genetics can be related to the more recent possible life during the Holocaust. The same may be said of her fears of physicians and of men in general. Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that S possesses any special paranormal gifts outside her memories of the two lives and the intermission periods. Finally, it seems very implausible that S would get impressions of two arbitrary lives that would not be related to herself or to each other and that she would even add stories about an intermediate state between lives which in themselves cannot be explained as mere fantasy. (3) Reincarnation This is in my opinion the most plausible hypothesis for this case as a whole. It explains all the paranormal elements in the story, including those elements that seem related to the intermission period, and also its behavioural aspects. Also, the case shows the same pattern as the classic Cases of the Reincarnation Type in young children which can be found all over the world. I certainly don't claim that S's case amounts to the best evidence for reincarnation ever found. But I do believe that the reincarnation hypothesis which is supported by a hard core of solved "paranormal" cases studied by Ian Stevenson, Erlendur Haraldsson, K.S. Rawat, Jamuna Prasad, Hernani Guimaraes Andrade and others, is applicable to this fascinating unsolved Western case. Therefore, I consider the "errors" and fragmentary elements in S's story as distortions of real memories, rather than as mere fantasies. My interpretation might obviously have been different if S's case were the only case of possible reincarnation memories or if it had had a clearly deviant structure. The reader should note that this standpoint of mine does not depend on my specific interpretation of her statements in a historical context. Conclusions about the case of S The case of S seems to come down to a gifted girl with recollections of two real past lives, during the Holocaust and possibly also during the reign of the Spanish Inquisition. In her possible life in Peru she seems to have -implicitly or explicitly- been acquainted to ideas related to the Kabbalah. In this life she also shows a great sensitivity for symbolism, that corresponds to her possible Kabbalistic past. At least one of her poems shows an association with the Tarot, or with occultism in general: "And moonlight bathed the ground And water was filled with mystery all around", This is a poem that her mother wrote down when she was only 4, namely on June 30th 1995. It reminds one of the moon goddess Diana, who in the Tarot can also be represented by the Highpriestess. Diana was the "goddess" of many witches and heretics. The moon is a symbol for the hidden, the occult and indeed for "mystery". On the card of the Moon of that same Tarot we can also see water. Pieter van Wezel found an even closer link with the Highpriestess. The Highpriestess can be a symbol of the Moon as the icon of wisdom and the female element. She understands things in the dark, whereas the Magician (first card of the Great Arcanum) stands in the daylight. According to the well-known Kabbalistic treatise Zohar the full moon is a symbol of wisdom, Pieter told me. In flamenco, an art form which can be seen as the result of an ancient fusion of Gypsy, Moorish, Christian, as well as Jewish (Sephardic) traditions, there still are mysterious references to the moon. The famous 19th-Century flamenco-singer El Planeta used to sing a "siguiriyas" from which he would have derived his nickname: A la luna le pido, la del alto sielo, como le pido que saque a mi pare de'onde esta preso Which means: I beg the moon In the high sky That she frees my father From prison Here's a song with a similar text, interpreted by Carmen Linares (second verse). S is not the only person with possibly veridical memories of a life during the reign of the Spanish Inquisition. The in my view best case presented so far within the literature about reincarnation regression therapy, studied by Linda Tarazi (1990; 1996), also involved someone who fell a victim to it. There is another link to the Cathars, who according to some would also regularly recall their past lives, although there will probably be a lot of fantasy cases among these claims. We can try to explain this in two different ways that do not necessarily exclude each other. S may remember the life in "Macchu Picchu" because of its horrible ending. She may also have had a strong mind, trained in the Kabbalah or the Talmud. This would correspond to the fact that a number of veridical memories of previous lives refer to lives of people with a religious orientation. Important implications of the case of S This case seems to have some important implications. (1) It seems to confirm that a subject can remember two past lives. Another case is that of Swarnlata Mishra, studied by Ian Stevenson (Stevenson, 1970). (2) It appears to show that there can be thematic relations between lives, that remind one of the concept of "karma" (Rivas, 1998): The recollections may refer to two Jewish past lives, and in S's present life she is once more born as a Jewish girl. If we take her memories seriously and interpret Rilliyanta della Salamon as a reference to symbolism relevant to Jews, this would mean that S might already have incarnated into a Jewish context for at least three times. This certainly could not be ascribed to mere coincidence. There is a connection between two lives in Amsterdam. This geographical aspect has been described before by Stevenson as many of his cases occur at a relatively small distance from the location where the previous life ended. However, there is a considerable distance between the Andes and Amsterdam, which indicates that this geographical factor does not hold in every case. There is a connection between the life ended in "Warsaw" and experiences of Leora herself that seem to refer to the Holocaust. Finally there appears to be an intellectual link - consisting of the elements related to the Kaballah - between her possible life in Peru, her memories of another world after both previous lives, and S's poetry. (3) It seems to confirm that children can have specific memories of an intermediate state in a hereafter after death and before a reincarnation, also known as memories of an intermission period or MIPS (Rivas, 1998; Harrison & Harrison, 1995). (4) The description of another world contained various concepts from the Kaballah and mentions several places, among which a place for "Jewish and Christians", which may confirm a spiritualistic hypothesis that states that the way we experience the "other side" is strongly determined by the subject's own images and concepts of it, and that spirits with a similar "wave-length", i.e. a similar mental or conceptual background, could meet each other there. (5) Leora's announcing dream about a gir who would be born in a particular house seems to confirm the possibility that women can dream about souls that will reincarnate with them even before their pregnancy. (6) Leora's dream about a kind of a committee seems to corroborate that souls have a say in the choice of the circumstances of their next life. (7) This also seems to show that mothers are not only able to have "announcing dreams" about their (future) children but apparently also to dream about the moment on which a soul takes a decision about its next life. (8) Finally, S's giftedness confirms that there is a positive correlation between psychological development and memories of past lives in young children (Haraldsson, 1997). References - Anonymous (1987). Todo Salamanca y su provincia. Barcelona: Editorial Escudo de Oro. - Bowman, C. (1997). Wie was mijn kind? [Children's past lives]. Utrecht: Bruna Uitgevers. - Gershom, Rabbijn Y. (1997). Onmogelijke herinneringen [Beyond the Ashes]. Zeist: Uitgeverij Vrij Geestesleven. - Haraldsson, E. (1997). A psychological comparison between ordinary children and those who claim previous-life memories. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11, 3, 323-335. - Harrison, P., & Harrison, M. (1995). Reïncarnatieverhalen van kinderen. Deventer: Ankh-Hermes. - Karlén, B. (1998). En de wolven huilden: Fragmenten uit een leven. Zeist: Indigo. - Ka-tsetnik 135633 (Eliyah N. De-Nur). (1996). Daniella. Houten: Van Reemst Uitgeverij. - Ka-tsetnik 135633 (Eliyah N. De-Nur). (1996). Moni. Houten: Van Reemst Uitgeverij. - Keneally, Th. (1994). Schindlers lijst. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Luitingh. - Langedijk, P., & Enkhuizen, A. van (1998). Concentratiekamp- en oorlogservaringen in vorige levens in relatie met problemen nu. Deventer: Ankh-Hermes. - Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah: An oral history of the Holocaust. The complete text of the film (Engelse vertaling). New York: Pantheon Books. - Miert, J. v. (1994). Oorlog en bezetting: Nederland 1940-1945 in woord, beeld en geluid. Utrecht: Kosmos-Z&K Uitgevers. - Rivas, T. (1991). Alfred Peacock? Reincarnation fantasies about the Titanic. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 58, 10-15. - Rivas, T. (1994). Dromen over vorige levens. Prana, 85, 43-46. - Rivas, T. (1995). Arte Flamenco: Heilige sentimentaliteit. Prana, 91, 65-69. - Rivas, T. (1998a). Vroegere levens op de Titanic. Prana, 107, 83-88. - Rivas, T. (1998b). Kees: Een Nederlands geval van herinneringen aan een vorige incarnatie met herinneringen aan een toestand tussen dood en wedergeboorte. Spiegel der Parapsychologie, 36, 1, 43-55. - Rivas, T. (2000). Parapsychologisch onderzoek naar reincarnatie en leven na de dood. Deventer: Ankh-Hermes. - Robbins, R.H. (1981). The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Bonanza Books. - Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Z. (1987). Thoughts on the Shoah: Two Jewish Holocaust reincarnation cases. Tikkun-magazine, Vol. 2, 1. - Scholz, W. von (1983). Der Zufall und das Schicksal: Die geheimen Kräfte des Unwahrscheinlichen. Freiburg: Herderbücherei. - SDU Uitgeverij. (1995). In Memoriam. Den Haag. - Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus: A survivor's tale. New York: Pantheon's books. - Stevenson, I. (1970). Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. - Tarazi, L. (1990). An unusual case of hypnotic regression with some unexplained contents. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 84, 309-344. - Tarazi, L. (1996). Reïncarnatieherinneringen uit de zestiende eeuw; hypnotische regressie. Prana, 97, 29-53. This article is part of a series of reports called "Papers of Athanasia", 2001, issue 1. A summary of the case of S is included in my book Parapsychologisch onderzoek naar reincarnatie en leven na de dood, published in 2000 by Ankh-Hermes at Deventer. Channel 4 included this case in a documentary about reincarnation produced in 2000: Children's Past Lives by L. Granditer and K. Babington. OHM (Organisatie voor Hindoe Media) broadcasting station dedicated part of a radio programme to this case. Here's a translation of this article in Portuguese: O Caso de S - Reincarnation Research: In search of the most parsimonious exhaustive hypothesis - Occult advance