Salt Lake City – A new claim has surfaced that the Mormon church has posthumously baptized a Holocaust victim, this time Anne Frank.
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The allegations come just a week after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized when it was brought to light that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized by church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January.
Mormon researcher Helen Radkey, who revealed the Wiesenthal baptisms, said this week she found Frank’s name in proxy baptism records dated Feb. 18, showing the ritual was performed in the Santo Domingo Temple in the Dominican Republic.
The Mormon church almost immediately issued a statement, though it didn’t mention Frank by name.
“The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism,” the Salt Lake City-based church said. “It is distressing when an individual willfully violates the Church’s policy and something that should be understood to be an offering based on love and respect becomes a source of contention.”
Church officials did not return telephone calls and emails from The Associated Press on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam declined comment.
Larry Bair, the president of the Mormon temple of Santo Domingo, said Thursday he had looked into the reports but was unable to verify that Frank had been baptized.
If it did occur, Bair told the AP, “it was a mistake.”
Frank was a Jewish teenager forced into hiding in Amsterdam during the Holocaust and killed in a concentration camp. Her diary was published in 1947.
Mormons believe the baptism ritual allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but it offends members of many other religions.
Jews are particularly offended by an attempt to alter the religion of Holocaust victims, and the baptism of Holocaust survivors was supposed to have been barred by a 1995 agreement.
The church said it takes “a good deal of deception and manipulation to get an improper submission through the safeguards we have put in place.”
“While no system is foolproof in preventing the handful of individuals who are determined to falsify submissions, we are committed to taking action against individual abusers by suspending the submitter’s access privileges,” the church said in its statement. “We will also consider whether other Church disciplinary action should be taken.”
Can someone please explain how this works?
What is the big deal here, other than it being disrespectful?
Is there anyone here who believes that the actions of the Mormon Church, even if true, would have in any way affected anything?
Even a live, willing apostate who converts and renounces Judaism remains Jewish for all time, so what is this uproar all about?
If I were to claim to have posthumously converted the founder of the Mormon Church to Judaism, does anyone believe that he is now upstairs davening in a minyan?
Don’t we have enough REAL problems to worry about?
This is such narishkeit. Rituals that they do in honor of someone else has no meaning unless you subscribe to their belief system. Yaakov didn’t want to be buried in Mitzrayim because he didn’t want his body to be an idol for them. Ceremonies that they do on behalf of others, absent corpses, and without consent surely hold no sway in the eyes of G-d. This is all being stirred up to sway the Jews against electing a Mormon.
Who represents the “Jewish people” to make such “deals”. There is no reason to be offended by this at all. This is a stupid thing for the self-proclaimed “leaders” of the Jewish people to argue with nice, well-meaning people about. If you are not a Mormon, it is not real, so why be offended. Being offended is like being modeh to avodah zarah RL.
This so called baptism by proxy is utterly meaningless to us.
not sure what the big deal is. who really cares what the mormons do. it has no effect of anything accept in their little heads.
In all seriousness there is a website that allows you to give the name of a dead mormon and say that he is “happy,” v’hamayvin yovin. Does that make him “happy?” NO!! So neither would a stupid phostumous ceremony make someone a moron.
Why do you care? You don’t even consider secular Jews to be Jewish?!
I see this doesn’t bother any of the posters above. But it bothers me… Maybe just like kaddish can raise the soul, something like this can lower the soul. If avoda zara is meaningless why does it have such a chamur issur ? There are things from the olam haemes that we can’t possibly understand. But I do know it is safer to just have the mormons stay away from our kedoshim!
Even though Mormons can’t really convert a deceased person by proxy, if Mr. Romney becomes the Republican nominee for president, we can expect to see reams of stories like this one.
At least there aren’t any Mormon preachers on record as having said G-d d- America. At least there aren’t any Mormon preachers that are friendly and sympathetic toward Farakan and The Nation of Islam.
Additionally, who cares? If someone went to your most prized possession ie your house or your car and proclaimed it to be avodah zorah, does this item become avodah zarah? Will you be obligated to destroy it without deriving any further benefit? The answer is,
Wait for it,
NO.
I’m surprised the complete disrespect & lack of consideration for your people & their history, isn’t that offensive to many!
The question isn’t whether or not the Mormons are *effective* at actually baptizing the dead. Of course their religion is nonsense & doesn’t effect anything.
The question is whether or not this is horribly offensive to the victims of the Holocaust, who gave their LIVES defending their faith & who they were… only to have their name & memory be besmirched at the hands of the Mormon Church, by posthumously considering the person a Mormon!
Who here is seriously comfortable w\them doing this to Anne Frank?!?! (Of all people- bless her!) And, behind the backs of the Jewish Community no less?!
And would any of you be seriously comfortable w\this, if you found out the Mormon Church did this to one of your OWN favorite Rabbis?!
What if they tried to do this with Shimon Bar Yohai for pete’s sakes?!
It’s not about the process being *effective* or not! (ie: I wouldn’t lose any sleep at night, if somebody put a “voodoo curse” on me, because I know it’s nonsense.)
It’s the fact that it’s offensive to so MANY, they KNOW it is & yet… they keep doing it anyway!!!