The Air Raid Shelter
My father never joined the Nazi party and, as mentioned earlier, he was fortunate enough not to have to go to war. As far as I know, he never even held a gun in his hands. The closest he came to the war effort was being conscripted for six months to supervise the digging of trenches on the western front. This is how it came about that he was at home when our neighbours decided to build the air raid shelter, briefly touched upon earlier. He did not approve of this project and wanted no part in it for whatever reasons. However, having been involved in earth-moving work, he recognised the danger of the bunker’s visibility and warned them about it. Towards the end of the war, he advised those responsible to hoist a white flag on top of it, so that it could be identified from the air as a civilian and not a military installation, in the hope that it would then be spared.
His advice was ignored and disaster struck very early in the spring of 1945, only a few weeks before the official announcement of Germany’s total and unconditional surrender on May 15th. The war was almost over and we were now in the front line of the advancing Allied Forces. On one of those bright and sunny days in spring about midday the bunker came under artillery attack. Most of those who had been hoping it would give them shelter perished. It was no accident because three shots had been carefully planted: one in front, the next one behind and the third one into the centre. No-one will ever know whether a white flag really could have avoided this disaster only a few hundred yards from our house.
The victims were mostly women and children, two of them small babies. One family was hardest hit. A mother with her eldest and youngest daughter of only a few weeks died. Her two middle daughters, playmates of my sister and me, were left behind with terrible injuries. Our town was lucky to still have a hospital and both girls had to spend months in it. Shrapnel had penetrated both thighs of the older girl, in one side and out the other, through both of them. The younger one also had shrapnel wounds, but not of as serious a nature. Both girls’ faces were disfigured by black fragments of gunpowder that had become deeply embedded in their skins.
Again the younger sister was the less unfortunate one. Within a few years all the black particles had been removed from her face. In Germany when disaster strikes and things are not as bad as they might have been, one speaks of someone having ‘Glück im Unglück’, which means literally good fortune within bad. This was the case for the younger sister, Margaret, but the older one’s black specks were sitting so deep that with the passing of time many were almost impossible to remove. The last time I saw Gisela as a grown-up woman she had got so fed up with the painful procedure of their removal that she could not bear any more of it. Although her face still was badly marked, she seemed to be coping well. I have always admired her courage.
The girls’ father had been missing somewhere on the Russian front and until he was released from one of the infamous prisoner of war camps in Siberia, several years after the end of the war, the girls were brought up by their grandparents. After a while their father married again and two more children were born to the family, who had always been staunchly Christian, irrespective of the fact that matters of faith were not only frowned upon by the Nazi authorities, but openly scorned and ridiculed. In the tradition of the Christian martyrs, this family bravely carried the cross of the problems that were created by the adherence to any kind of religion.
Upon the father’s return from Russia, he and his new wife dedicated their whole life to their religion. In view of the fact that Jesus never existed as a historical figure, it has been puzzling me for many years why people would stick to their faith even though, for example in the Jesus legend, there is nothing but a thoughtform * behind it. On the day of the full Moon * in Cancer on 9th July 2017, which takes place in Capricorn, the explanation for this phenomenon came to me intuitively.
It is the follower’s faith in the Highest forces of life, in whichever form someone believes in them, that supports and sustains believers and non-believers at all times, especially during traumatic periods of war and all other human-made and natural disasters. This is what pulls people through any kind of ordeal. The believer’s faith is deepened by the knowledge of how the power of God helped them.
The Angels gave Jesus as a thoughtform to our world and it is their power that manifests itself through it to those who sincerely believe in him as the only born Son of God, who once walked in our midst. Every one of the thoughtforms that ever were created by the Angels is constantly supported by the power of their wisdom and love for those who are in need of it in any part of our world.
As soon as one religion and its thoughtforms have served their purpose, the energies that were thus created are gradually withdrawn and replaced by those of the new religion. The ever declining number of church attendances shows how this has been happening in our world for quite some time. The waning of the interest in one of the old religions is accompanied by an increase of attention for the new religion, in this case the religion of the new age *.
A comparison between our two families shows how the war experiences affected people’s beliefs in profoundly different ways. While my parents lost whatever spiritual beliefs they may have had, the other family became more devoted to Jesus than ever before.
After having been reared in a veritable spiritual desert, I am deeply grateful for my comprehension of God’s true nature and our own, and of God’s great plan for all life, including us and our world. It’s good to know that there is so much more to our existence than meets the eye, and that our physical bodies are by no means the most essential part of our being. Important though they are while we are here, we are not physical beings, but merely live temporarily in a physical environment.
The only thing that really matters is that which is alive inside our physical bodies. The essence of our being is spirit and soul and they are immortal and cannot die, and our true home is not the Earth but the world of spirit. Wise ones, who are aware of these things and wish that our world should become a more peaceful place, endeavour to conduct their daily lives in ever more peaceful ways. The knowledge they have gained of the higher purpose of their existence makes this easy for them.
To paraphrase Kahlil Gibran: ‘Knowledge and understanding are life’s faithful companions who will never let you down. Knowledge is your crown and understanding your staff and when they are with you, you can possess no greater treasures.’
* Recommended Reading:
• ‘The Full Moon’
• ‘You Are Your Own Creators’
• ‘The Religion Of The New Age’
This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’