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Datum: Samstag, den 27. Dezember 2003, um 2:54 Uhr

Betrifft: nun werden juristische Schritte geprÃ¼ft

The New York Times

Mormon rite wrongs Jews

By Ian Urbina
December 26, 2003

A Jewish group is considering legal action to stop the Mormon Church from posthumously baptising many Jews, especially Holocaust victims.

Under what Mormons call vicarious baptism - a significant rite of the church - the dead are baptised by living church members who act as proxies.

But in 1995, after evidence emerged that at least 380,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims were on baptismal lists in the church’s archives in Salt Lake City, the church agreed to end the rite without consent from descendants and said it would remove the names of Holocaust victims placed on the lists before 1995.

"For the last seven years, we’ve had entirely cordial relations with the Mormons," said Ernest Michel, who negotiated the agreement on behalf of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, which claims 180,000 members. "But the agreement is clear and they have not held up their end."

Last year, Helen Radkey, an independent researcher in Salt Lake City, gave Mr Michel evidence that the Mormon lists still included the names of at least 20,000 Jews, many of them Holocaust victims and prominent figures such as the philosopher Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. Ms Radkey also provided Mr Michel with evidence that many of these Jews had been baptised after 1995.

But Mormon officials say they remain in full compliance with the 1995 agreement.

"We have actually gone above and beyond," said D. Todd Christofferson, a church official involved with the negotiations. The church removed the names of Holocaust victims listed before 1995 and continues to instruct its members to avoid baptising Jews who are not directly related to living Mormons or whose immediate family has not given written consent, Mr Christofferson said.

But he said it was not the church’s responsibility to monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear. "We never had in mind that we would, on a continual basis, go in and ferret out the Jewish names," Mr Christofferson said, adding that the labour involved in constantly sifting through an ever-expanding archive, which contains more than 400 million names, would represent an "intolerable burden."

Some Jewish genealogists agree with the Mormon interpretation of the agreement.