In 1937, the president of the LDS Church, Heber J. Grant, had visited Germany and urged the members to remain, get along, and not cause trouble.
Consequently, some church members saw Helmuth Hübener (today’s Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney) as a troublemaker who made things difficult for other Latter-day Saints in Germany. This recommendation did not change after Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass, Pogrom against the Jews), which occurred the year following Grant’s visit.
The local Latter-day Saint branch president, Arthur Zander, was a supporter of the Nazi Party, and had affixed a notice to the meetinghouse entrance stating, “Jews not welcome.” Ten days after the arrest of Hübener, on Feb. 15 1942, Zander claimed to have excommunicated the young man demonstratively.
On Oct., at 8:13 PM, Helmuth (age 17) was beheaded by guillotine in the execution room at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
During the Holocaust, the Catholic Church played a role in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis. Members of the church, through lobbying of Axis officials, provision of false documents, and the hiding of people in monasteries, convents, schools, among families and the institutions of the Vatican itself, saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. Many priests were sent to concentration camps.
In the face of evil, the Mormons, for the most part, turned their cheek to the atrocities and were urged by the church president to be passive bystanders and cowards, in my opinion.
Here we go again.
In 2022 with Ukrainians dying by the thousands to save their democracy, the leaders of the LDS Church are passive with silence or outright enthusiastic enablers as polls show the majority of the members they are supposed to lead follow undemocratic, unpatriotic lies (more than any organized religion) from an evil authoritarian with a failed coup of our free and fair elections.
If the overwhelming majority of your flock follow, enable, repeat and worship liars it is for all purposes a deceptive church that equivocates (giving an appearance or impression of the true one, misleading) with no regard for our democracy or children’s future to live in one.
This is not politics. It is black and white, right over wrong. Where is the church leadership? Their silence is deafening.
Is the Orange God of lies so powerful at this time that leadership will just be silent?
It is disgusting that our four congressmen, including Burgess Owens, voted against certifying the 2020 election and Sen. Mike Lee (who was involved in the election lies) compares the porn star-bribing essence of pride (immoral Orange Evil God) to Captain Moroni. No one who cares about truth and democracy should be voting for these sedition sympathizers — period.
I would ask the leaders to take a stand, condemn the lies and condemn the support of the overwhelming majority of their members of the unpatriotic, undemocratic lies. After all, it is the church itself that teaches the Constitution is an inspired document. If you believe it, practice what you preach.
Ken Olsen, Sandy
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