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Old November 10th, 2008 #1
alex revision
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Default Jewish group wants halt to proxy baptismal rites

Jewish group wants halt to proxy baptismal rites


http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_10946362?source=rss

11/10/2008

A group of Holocaust survivors says 14 years of negotiations with the Mormon church over posthumous baptism of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps have fallen apart. Some of the aging survivors were to gather in New York City on Monday at the Center for Jewish History to denounce the church for its practice.

Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said in a statement that talks with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are over.

Posthumous baptism is a sacred rite practiced in Mormon temples to offer church membership to the deceased. Mormons are encouraged to conduct family genealogy research and forward the names of ancestors for baptism by proxy.

The Mormon church contends that the baptism offer can be rejected by the intended recipient in the afterlife. Church spokesman Mike Otterson said the church does not intend to perform baptisms or other rites in its temples for Holocaust victims, except "in the very rare instances" when they have living descendants who are Mormon. Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz, scheduled Monday's news conference for the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

"We do not ask for, or want your love," Michel's prepared message to Mormon leaders read. "We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion. ... We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."

A contingent of Mormon leaders had met with Michel and others in New York a week ago to continue the discussions. Otterson said genuine empathy for the feelings of Jews related to the Holocaust have kept Mormon leadership working on the issue over the years, but that Michel's decision to publicly denounce the church seems like a unilateral termination of the discussion.

"Those steps by Mr. Michel on behalf of the American Gathering were both unnecessary and unfortunate and belie the long and valued mutual respect that we have had in past years," Otterson said in an e-mail.

Mormon and Jewish leaders have debated the issue since 1994 and signed an agreement in 1995 to limit the circumstances in which Holocaust victims could be baptized. Under the agreement, Mormons could only enter the names of Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related.

The church also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its massive genealogical database. Otterson said the church has kept its part of the agreement by removing more than 200,000 names from the genealogical index. But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by a Salt Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.

Researcher Helen Radkey said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from camp and government records are being dumped into the database. She said she has seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate Mormon religious rites, including baptisms, had been conducted for these Holocaust victims, some as recently as July 2008.

"I've seen a steady procession of Jewish Holocaust names, especially names with camps linked to them, going to the International Genealogical Index," said Radkey, who acknowledges that she has limited access to the records. "There's no possible way of knowing exactly how many names, but it's substantial."
 
Old November 10th, 2008 #2
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