Conquer Club

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performs vicarious baptisms for individuals regardless of their race, sex, creed, or morality. It has baptized both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler. Some Jewish Holocaust survivors and some Jewish organizations have strenuously objected to this practice.

The LDS Church has urged members to submit the names of only their own ancestors for ordinances, and to request permission of surviving family members of people who have died within the past 75 years. Hundreds of thousands of improperly submitted names not adhering to this policy have been removed from the records of the Church.[40] Latter-day Saint apostle Boyd K. Packer has stated the LDS Church is clear that it uses the public records it collects for temple ordinance work.[41]

Despite the guidelines, some members of the Church have submitted the names of Holocaust victims, and prominent Nazis, such as Heinrich Himmler, for vicarious baptism without adequate permission. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that, following a 1995 promise from the church to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index, the Church's database included the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance "to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria."[42][43] Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the International Genealogical Index, and discovered that many well known Jews had been vicariously baptized, including Maimonides, Albert Einstein, and Irving Berlin, without family permission.[44], [45]

Church official D. Todd Christofferson told the New York Times that the church expends massive amounts of resources attempting to purge improperly submitted names, but that it is not feasible to expect the Church to find each and every last one, and that the agreement in 1995 did not place this type of responsibility on the centralized church leadership.[46]

Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke out against the vicarious baptism of Holocaust perpetrators and victims in the mid-1990s and again in the 2000s when they discovered the practice, which they consider insensitive to the living and the dead, was continuing.[47][48] The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Abraham Cooper, complained that infamous figures such as Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun appeared on LDS genealogical records: "Whether official or not, the fact remains that this is exactly the kind of activity that enraged and hurt, really, so many victims of the Holocaust and caused alarm in the Jewish community."[49][50]

In 2008, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors announced that, since the Church had repeatedly violated previous agreements, it would no longer negotiate with the Church to try to prevent vicarious baptism. Speaking on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Ernest Michel, a Holocaust survivor who reported on the Nuremberg Trials, [51][dead link] speaking as the honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, called on the LDS Church to "implement a mechanism to undo what [they] have done", and declared that the LDS Church had repeatedly violated their agreements, and that talks with Mormon leaders were now ended. Jewish groups, he said, would now turn to the court of public opinion for justice.[52] Michel called the practice a revision of history that plays into the hands of Holocaust deniers, stating: "They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but ... 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?"[53]

the carpet man wrote:which is baptising a nazi victim jew any different to baptising anyone else? what about all those christian nazis who have now been baptised as mormons?

2dimes wrote:The hitler thing used to be much more entertaining. I have seen a copy of a copy of a document perported to be the certificate of baptism. Better still they were not initially embarassed by it and even had posted about it in a public area of their website. For some reason there were Christian dudes using that information to support their claim that "the Mormans are doing it wrong."

Now it's been removed from their web presence and I'm pretty sure everyone has officially been told to deny it happened.

My only question was, since in their opinion everyone can atone for themselves. What pennace would Adolf do to make amends? Say sorry to everyone he caused death, disfigurement and pain to?

"Oh hello, dredfully sorry about what they did to your mom back on Earth. Turns out you were humans after all. Mine bad."

the carpet man wrote:which is baptising a nazi victim jew any different to baptising anyone else? what about all those christian nazis who have now been baptised as mormons?

AAFitz wrote:

the carpet man wrote:which is baptising a nazi victim jew any different to baptising anyone else? what about all those christian nazis who have now been baptised as mormons?

I actually agree with you carpe....there is no difference....its equally pointless.

jonesthecurl wrote:Imagine if they pissed on the corpses. That would generate outrage. And somebody would defend them.

Symmetry wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:Imagine if they pissed on the corpses. That would generate outrage. And somebody would defend them.

Indeedy. Probably some whiny religious types would be bitching on here about desecration. It's no different than pissing on living folk. after all.

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:Imagine if they pissed on the corpses. That would generate outrage. And somebody would defend them.

Indeedy. Probably some whiny religious types would be bitching on here about desecration. It's no different than pissing on living folk. after all.

Damn right. ITT Sym wins.

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:Imagine if they pissed on the corpses. That would generate outrage. And somebody would defend them.

Indeedy. Probably some whiny religious types would be bitching on here about desecration. It's no different than pissing on living folk. after all.

Damn right. ITT Sym wins.

Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:Imagine if they pissed on the corpses. That would generate outrage. And somebody would defend them.

Indeedy. Probably some whiny religious types would be bitching on here about desecration. It's no different than pissing on living folk. after all.

Damn right. ITT Sym wins.

Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

I fully agree with Sym and also with my previous post agreeing with Sym.

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:
Indeedy. Probably some whiny religious types would be bitching on here about desecration. It's no different than pissing on living folk. after all.

Damn right. ITT Sym wins.

Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

I fully agree with Sym and also with my previous post agreeing with Sym.

It's probably just Political Correctness gone mad, to be fair. Rewriting history to say that people hold a position they never took, and is entirely contrary to the beliefs they were executed for?

BigBallinStalin wrote:Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

But surely you know it won't, just as I knew that changing your statements would be annoying and not something you'd be able to let go. The point is settled right there- when you can't even let an argument on an internet forum be totally changed without annoyance, how can you argue that conversion of dead loved ones is something that should be let go?

BigBallinStalin wrote:

Symmetry wrote:

BigBallinStalin wrote:Cheers dude. Your conversion will, I hope, prove totally inoffensive.

But surely you know it won't, just as I knew that changing your statements would be annoying and not something you'd be able to let go. The point is settled right there- when you can't even let an argument on an internet forum be totally changed without annoyance, how can you argue that conversion of dead loved ones is something that should be let go?

It's probably just Political Correctness gone mad, to be fair.