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Mormons and Jewish Group Agree On Removal Of Names
Mormon record-gatherers who baptized 380,000 Holocaust victims posthumously were motivated by quot;love and compassionquot; and didn't understand that their gesture would offend Jews, a church official said.
"They were deeply moved by the tragedy of that terrible, terrible event,quot; but didn't realize that what they intended as a quot;Christian act of service" was quot;misguided and insensitive," said Monte J. Brough, a member of the Mormon Church's Presidency of the Seventy.
Brough spoke Wednesday as Jewish and Mormon leaders signed an agreement to remove the Holocaust victims' names from the church's lists of people who have been baptized as Mormons after death. The brief signing ceremony was intended to end a controversy that arose after some Jewish survivors learned last year, to their shock, that relatives had been baptized into the Christian faith after they perished in Nazi death camps.
"On the 50th anniversary of our liberation and our escape ... what could potentially have been a bigger problem was solved in a most positive and most agreeable manner,quot; said Ernest Michel, chairman of the World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, one of five Jewish groups involved.
Michel became a leader on the issue after discovering last year that his parents, who died at Auschwitz, and other relatives were among those who had been posthumously baptized as Christian. quot;I must tell you that I was incensed - I had no other reaction.quot;
Brough said the posthumous baptisms were a mistake that violated church policy. Baptism is a basic Mormon tenet, but only ancestors of church members are normally entitled to posthumous baptism, he said.
The six-page agreement, approved by Jewish organization leaders about two weeks ago, calls for all of the Jewish Holocaust victims' names to be removed from the church's vast International Genealogical Index. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints maintains the world's largest genealogical library, with some 2 billion names of people of many faiths and nationalities. The purpose, Brough said, is to quot;unite extended family members in an eternal bond.quot; Brough is executive director of its Family History Department.
Of the 2 billion names in the IGI, about 200 million have been baptized by living proxies who are members of the church. Most were from North America, Western Europe and Asia, he said. Most of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were from Germany and Eastern Europe.
Brough said the 380,000 names had been given the quot;temple ordinancequot; of baptism by nine well-meaning but overzealous Mormon record-gatherers. The nine, whom he did not name, were motivated by quot;love and compassionquot;after visiting Holocaust museums and memorials, Brough said. quot;The nine are apologetic, and appalled that they did not understand the sensitivities that were involved here,quot; Brough said.
It will take several months for IGI computers to find and eliminate all the baptized names, Brough said. Once removed, they will not appear in any IGI records.
The Mormon church discovered in 1990 that names entered from German, Dutch, French and Israeli rosters of Holocaust victims had been baptized by mistake and ordered that such baptisms cease, except for people who had living descendants in the church.
Brough said that if it should be discovered that other large groups had been baptized posthumously into the Mormon faith, their names also would be removed.
Source: AP News Salt Lake City, May 1995.
For Mormon reaction to this signing.