Mormons baptize Holocaust victim Anne Frank posthumously

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Anne Frank— the most famous of all Holocaust victims — has been posthumously baptized at a Mormon temple, fueling the growing controversy over the bizarre practice.

The rite was conducted Saturday in a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic, according to Helen Radkey, an excommunicated church member turned whistleblower.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practices proxy Baptism — converting Jews, Christians and Muslims to the faith years after they died by ritually dunking a stand-in for the deceased.

Radkey has revealed that Mormons posthumously baptized thousands of people, including Joan of Arc, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Barack Obama’s mother.

Fury over the discovery in 1995 that the church had turned more than 300,000 Jews killed by Nazis for their faith into Mormons led the LDS church to promise to quit baptizing Holocaust victims.

In a statement Tuesday, the church said it was considering taking disciplinary action.

 “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,” the church said.

Frank, who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen death camp after writing her famous diary, has been baptized by the Mormon church at least nine times before, according to Radkey.

Last week, the Mormon church apologized for posthumously baptizing the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His mother was killed in a death camp in 1942.

After finding out his parents, also killed by Nazis, had been baptized, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel last week called on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a onetime Mormon bishop, to speak out against the practice.

So far, it has not become a campaign issue.

Weisel, who is still living, discovered he was recently submitted to the Mormon genealogy database as “ready” for posthumous baptism.

According to documents dug up by Radkey, the LDS church also baptized Adolf Hitler in 1993.

Daily News

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