Posted by Books such as John Boyne’s 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Janusz Bardach’s 1999 memoir Man is Wolf to Man, and Tom Rob Smith’s 2008 novel Child 44 are necessary to remind us of the ease with which humans can become unethical, cruel, inhumane.
In Man is Wolf to Man, one of the characters states “How can people become so indoctrinated and deprived of humanity that they advance their own career by ruining the lives of innocent people”?
All the books are to some extent parables with a mix of fact and fiction, but all show how dictatorial authorities can swiftly turn people into sheep, take away their will and dignity and make them obey orders, even if the order leads ultimately to their own destruction.
Fear allows humans to be stripped of freedoms: movement, writing, speech, even the ability to think freely. Is compliance with fear propaganda the right thing to do today, in the same way as happened in the pre-war and post-war eras?
The word Sonderkommando was originally used to describe Jewish prisoners selected by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) to carry out tasks for the SS including disposal of corpses following death in the gas chambers, direction of prisoners to undress and enter the chambers, and multiple other physical labour duties such as digging up and burning bodies previously dumped in mass graves. In return, they were granted certain benefits such as better clothes and food, but ultimately they were killed after a few months too, as they carried knowledge of the atrocities.
Life in the Soviet Union was no different from life in Nazi Germany during that era. This is clear from books like Man is Wolf to Man and Child 44. Millions of innocent citizens were arrested and imprisoned by the State Secret Police (NKVD) on false charges such as ‘organising a counterrevolutionary group aimed at destroying the Soviet State and Stalin’. Family members would inform on each other with false testimonies to save themselves. They too can be described as sonderkommandos, just like the Jewish prisoners.
As a prisoner during that era, and even for those who were not prisoners, there was no real choice when a person was ordered by a superior to carry out a task. Failure to obey would most likely lead to a quick death for a prisoner, and arrest, imprisonment and likely subsequent death in the case of a free person. This has been well documented.
The dilemma was: survival, perhaps only for a short time, or, instant death. But survival required the carrying out (as a ‘sonderkommando’) of cruel and unethical tasks.
The question is therefore: what choice is “right”? Survival, even for a short time more, or death?
Martyrdom, or non-compliance, would appear to be the only realistic option for any high-vibrational soul, if we follow the ancient texts. We should not fear death of the body.
The time for the coming re-set of this world is approaching soon, and many ancient texts such as Gnostic, Hermetic and Biblical texts show a coming ‘separation’ of the ‘martyrs’ (“those that overcometh”) from the mass of humanity at the time of this coming re-set.
This ‘separation’ of souls occurs at transition of the body out of the physical world. It allows the end of recycling on transition where the soul has not succumbed to what has been termed “the mark of the beast”.
Today, the ‘sonderkommando’ is alive and well across humanity as people follow Government and media propaganda narratives. We must choose our actions well. A wrong choice now will surely see us return to the days of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, where both the public and private life of its citizens was the property of the State.
As was said in the beautiful 2002 film Solaris: “There are no answers, only choices”. It is up to us. Look inside for the right road, not to others.
The question is: Where do we wish to go on transition from this body out of the physical and into the non-physical world? That choice could be a recycling of the soul back into this physical world in a new body, or, for the martyrs, graduation from this world to a new world.
As Robert Frost said in his memorable 1915 poem The Road Not Taken:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less travelled by.
And that has made all the difference.
18 December 2023
[Book review: “Janusz Bardach – “Man is Wolf to Man”]
Piers Morris Blogspot 