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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SALT LAKE CITY - Researchers say Mormons have continued to posthumously baptize Jewish Holocaust victims into their faith despite a promise to discontinue the practice.

"We are very hopeful that we will be able to convince the church to stop," Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said Friday. If not, Michel said, his group would consider other options, "possibly legal steps."

Church spokesman Dale Bills said in a statement Friday evening that church officials "do not know what may come of these discussions, but we welcome the involvement of any who seek to resolve amicably the concerns expressed by some of our Jewish friends."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in to be baptized in the names of the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for them to reach heaven.

The practice is primarily intended to give salvation to the ancestors of Mormons, but many others are included, since the church believes that individuals' ability to choose a religion continues beyond the grave. Non-Mormon faiths have objected to the baptisms.

"It's ridiculous for people to pretend they have the key to heaven," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "And even if they say they want to do somebody a favor … it's not a symbol of love. It's a symbol of arrogance."

In 1995, the Mormon Church acceded to Jewish leaders' demands that the denomination stop posthumously baptizing Jews. But Helen Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher, said Friday that the process hasn't ended.

She said she has found posthumous baptism records for 268 Dutch Jews killed in Polish concentration camps, which she described as a "small sampling." All the death-camp victims were posthumously baptized well after the 1995 agreement.

Michel's group has asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to intervene in the matter, and the New York Democrat met last month with Mormon Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, though neither side would comment on the session.



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