MORMONS AGAIN VOW TO STOP BAPTIZING DEAD JEWS

Mormons again vow to stop baptizing Jews
Jewish and Mormon groups have come to an understanding; the Mormons will try to stop posthumously baptizing Jews, especially Holocaust survivors, except if they were related to Mormons.

In 1995, church leaders agreed to halt the proxy baptisms of Jews, but Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said he and his group had traveled to Utah armed with 5,000 pages of documentation proving that the ceremonies had continued, possibly as recently as this year. “According to our information they have not lived up to that agreement,” he said.

In the new agreement, the church agreed not to list the names of Holocaust victims in its databases, and the recently created Yad Vashem database, which holds the names of 3 million Holocaust victims, will not be mined and posted on Mormon databases, Michel said.

The International Genealogical Index, the Mormons’ primary database, now lists some 1 billion people who have been baptized posthumously. The church also publicizes several other databases — including one listing immigrants who passed through Ellis Island — with another approximately 1 billion names, for whom proxy baptisms have not necessarily been performed.

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