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From: "Eileen Polakoff" <>
Subject: [APG] re: Mormon/Jewish controversy
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 00:38:52 -0400
In-Reply-To: <20040701231110.94014.qmail@web52803.mail.yahoo.com>


Kathy Flynn said:
> I know this is an emotional issue.

... and ...

> You cannot cannot cry foul over legislation that will
> permanently close public vital records and then turn
> around and scare people about what someone may do with
> those very same records. This will only lead to the
> perfectly legally safe route of locking down
> everything even to relatives.

Yes, it is an emotional issue. And I'm not singling out Kathy... but I
thought some additional facts and opinions would help clarify the issue. And
some of Kathy's message lead me to write this response.

The original issue pre-1995 agreement between the Jewish community and the
LDS church centered around the baptizing of Holocaust victims. Organized
abstraction programs targeted lists of individuals who had been murdered
because they were Jewish. That was the only reason they were murdered...
their religion. Because siblings, children and grandchildren of these
victims could recall watching as their loved ones were being taken away to
gas chambers because they were Jewish, it was especially distressing to
learn that an organized effort was undertaken to baptize people who had been
killed by so-called Christians. Like adding salt to an open wound.

So the issue is not over public records that genealogists use all the time.
We all have to come to the realization that in the modern world everything
is open to someone and one day my name will be on a list I don't want it to
be on (and the dozens of spam messages I get a day tell me my name is
already on lots of lists). In another 50 years when someone baptizes all the
names of the individuals who died in New York City for the year I will
die... then my name will turn up in the IGI or whatever it is called at that
point. That I will have to "live" with. That is not the issue, as I
understand it, within the Jewish community. The issue is an agreement was
negotiated in good faith but it has not been honored by the GSG or the LDS
church (I'm not sure who signed the agreement and don't have a copy of it to
check handy).

One point which I think all genealogists are interested in having crystal
clear is what is the IGI and how is it compiled. While we are at defining
collections of indexes it would be helpful to have definitions of the
Ancestral File and any other large, or small, index which claims to be a
source for genealogists. Sources are important and the evaluation process of
any evidence should include a complete understanding of the finding aid
and/or source used.

Carol Skydell's message of July 1, 2004 at 9:19 am stated figures concerning
names of Holocaust victims who are re-appearing in the IGI in violation of
the agreement. It is the violation of the agreement which distresses so many
of us.

A final point.... I don't know what word or action taken against a family
member of a Christian family would be the ultimate betrayal. I do know,
however, that to a Jew the most evil thing you can suggest is that their
family member who died because they were Jewish has been baptized. The
choice given to Jews for two thousand years has been: convert or die.

Eileen Polakoff
New York City

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