Wow. The more you learn about the mormons, the creepier they get.

Once a cult, always a cult...

The Arizona Republic: Holocaust victims names may remain in Mormon database

Jewish leaders in a dispute with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over the practice of posthumous baptisms say the names of Jewish Holocaust victims continue to show up in the church's vast genealogical database.

"We've been dealing with it for 11 years, since 1995, and we continue to deal with it," said Ernest Michel, a Holocaust survivor and founding member of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

The names of more than 1,500 Dutch Jews that were supposed to be deleted from the church's International Genealogical Index actually remain in the database, Michel said.

Over the past three months, the entries were matched by Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey against a 1995 list of supposedly deleted names provided by church leaders to Michel's organization, which has contracted with Radkey for research services since 1999.

Michel, whose parents were posthumously baptized, says he is in talks with church leaders and hopes to meet with church officials in July to discuss the findings.

Mormon church spokesman Mike Otterson said Friday that no meeting has been scheduled, but he encouraged Michel to take his concerns to a working group of church staff and Jews set up in April 2005 to deal with database issues.

"One of the benefits of previous meetings is that we established an ongoing joint working group that would address what would appear to be any anomalies, or anything that appears to be slipping through our screening process," Otterson said. "That committee continues to meet and continues to be the best place for addressing these concerns."

Posthumous baptism is sacred rite practiced in Mormon church temples. Mormons believe they can offer membership in the church to the deceased. Church members are encouraged to conduct family genealogy research and forward their ancestors' names for baptism.

Church President Gordon B. Hinckley has said the baptismal rite is only an offer of membership that can be rejected in the afterlife by individuals.

How nice of you, Mr. Mormon. It's good to give the dead options.

"So, there's no injury done to anybody," Hinckley told The Associated Press in an interview last November.

Moron. Which, come to think of it, isn't too far from mormon.

But Jews are offended by the practice. In 1995, Mormon leaders signed an agreement that was supposed to prevent the names of Holocaust victims from being added to the database. The agreement would also have limited entries of other Jewish names to people who are direct ancestors of current Mormons.

Also that year, church family history officials gave Michel a compact disc which they said contained 380,000 Holocaust victims' names removed from church records.

An analysis of the CD by New Jersey-based Jewish genealogy expert Gary Mokotoff, however, showed the CD contained only 247,479 names, of which 31,688 are duplicates.

Since then Radkey has documented thousands of database entries that indicate the practice of adding names hasn't stopped.

In April 2005 five boxes of Radkey's research - more than 5,700 entries - were given to Mormon leaders during a meeting with Michel and others from his organization in Salt Lake City.

Afterward, D. Todd Christofferson, a member of a church leadership group called the Presidency of the Seventy, said the two groups would work toward an arrangement that would not "compromise our core beliefs and practices," while "still addressing the concerns of Jewish leaders."

The most recent 1,500 names are only a sampling, Radkey said. But the numbers are sufficient to raise questions about whether Jewish names were ever removed from the index, or have been re-entered into the system, which has an estimated 400 million records, she said. She also believes the church is ignoring the "direct ancestor" portion of the agreement.

"The sheer volume of entries in the IGI of Jewish, Yiddish names is overwhelming," said Radkey, who also noted nearly 1,000 marriage records that raise similar questions. "You can't have that number of obvious Jewish Holocaust victims and say that all of them are related to Mormons."

Michel said he has a good personal relationship with Mormon leaders and appreciates that they continue to discuss the issue.

"But they did sign (the agreement) and I think they've regretted it ever since," Michel said.

I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I'm pretty sure God (The real One, not some talking lizard.) takes a dim view of those who vex His Chosen People.