Claim Surfaces Of Anne Frank Baptism By Mormons

Last updated on: February 23, 2012 at 10:55 pm by

Claim Surfaces Of Anne Frank Baptism By Mormons 2012-02-23T22:55:12-07:00

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A new claim has surfaced that the Mormon church has posthumously baptized a Holocaust victim, this time Anne Frank.

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.”

___

Rindels reported from Las Vegas. AP writers Michael Corder contributed from the Hague, Netherlands, Ezequiel Abiu Lopez from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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