I’ve always said that I’ll get off the fence about reincarnation and become a believer when just one person I can identify with, who represents the hundreds of thousands of lives I know my parents’, grandparents’, great-grandparents’ generations lived through, shows up. (Shows up on any board or in any book, I mean, not just here.) Or when just one of Stalin’s millions of victims shows up. Or when there are as many victims of other maritime disasters put together as there are of the single Titanic.
So far, no luck. Not one of the folks that I know of in real life was a member of royalty, was famous (one did get his name in a local newspaper when he was hanged) or sank along with the Titanic. (A surprisingly large number of folks related to me did die in shipwrecks or had narrow escapes, which is one reason I’m waiting for other shipwreck victims. Perhaps they’d have known one of my relatives??)
In my life I’ve only run across two Nazis; one wasn’t a real one, just a sympathizer, he was an old Irish-Canadian guy back home who mutilated animals in his workshop, the other, whom I only knew of through his family, was a real but low-ranking one living in South America, who had a laboratory in his cellar for mutilating animals. Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but I haven’t wished to run across any more. From those who’d had more up close and personal contact with Nazis after the war I got the impression that they were mostly ordinary, stodgy, and bourgeois. Over the years they’ve turned into tall, dark and handsome men with cool uniforms and supernatural powers, lightning flashing from their fingers sort of thing. The fault of Raiders of the Lost Ark, perhaps, although I can’t deny the uniforms and boots were cool.
I think it’s unfair to suggest that millions of people had lives so uneventful there’d be no point in remembering them in comparison to the glamorous Nazis. That certainly wasn’t the case for the families I’m familiar with. How about leaving your parents and home at the age of fourteen and never seeing or having any contact with them again because you’re half a world away and you can’t read and write? Or marrying, fathering children, and dying - all before you reach the age of seventeen? Or of having your baby disemboweled in front of you because you resisted a political agenda? A while back there was a thread that mentioned cannibalism. When I was a child visiting my grandmother one Sunday afternoon I met an elderly couple she had staying with her, they were related to her in some manner and had just come to Canada, having survived the Stalin years and eventually escaping in the ’50’s. They’d eaten human flesh in the ‘30’s and were nonchalant about it. I have a zillion more stories, most of which no one here would want to hear. The life of a pudgy German officer would be a dull affair compared to the trauma, chaos, and adventures of just one of my progenitors or their cronies and acquaintances.
So it certainly remains a point of contention for me, as to why certain groups are so well-represented and others not at all. I’ve been reading books and accounts of reincarnation since the ’70’s and it’s quite noticeable that the same cussed annoying famous people or groups keep showing up.