The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (36 page)

“Which is?”

“Eight hundred
dollars per
hour
for
local
matters. T
en thousand a day
plus expenses
when
I’m
travelling
.”

“
Do clients actually pay that kind of money?”

“Willingly.”
He
poured himself coffee in a mug that bore the firm’s name in gold letters: Shulger Roberts &
Ginsburg
.
“Have you considered law school?”

“Not for me.” Ben sipped from his cup. It was good coffee.

“Why not?”

“I’m too honest.”

Ginsberg laughed.

“No offense.”

“
None taken. Many of my colleagues fit the stereotype.”

“But not you?”

“I was cut from a different cloth.”

“Tell me,” Ben said.

“The mail room,” t
he lawyer
said
.
“
R
ight here in this building
. That’s
where I started
, making
seventy-five
cents per hour
. The firm was called Shulger & Roberts back then
. I worked here through college and law school. Other than the time I clerked for Justice Brennan, I’ve been here my whole adult life
—a very fortunate life
.”

“
A busy life too. Your name shows up in every major legal battle
before the Supreme Court
.”

“
That’s how I learned to respect the media.”

“You looked me up?”

“We have to, ethically.
W
hen
ever
I g
et a call, my secretary do
es a conflict check of the person’s name to make sure none of the other
three
hundred lawyers here represents you or someone suing you.”

“I’m not involved in any legal matter.”

“
Not anymore.
”
The lawyer
glanced at his notes. “We found one case from about a decade ago.
Ben Teller vs. Maryland High
School Football League, et al.
Verdict for defendants. Must have hurt to lose the case.”

“My shoulder hurt, and my pride
—
being carried out on a stretcher in the middle of
the state championship game
.
The case
, however,
was painless.
”

“Sports lawsuits are hard to win.”

“
I
wouldn’t
sue. My insurance company sued
on my behalf to recover
medical expenses
.”

“A subrogation suit.” He glanced at the notes again.
“
You m
ajored in English at College Park,
earned
a
m
aster
’
s in political science
from Johns Hopkins
,
did an
internship at the
Baltimore Sun
, declined a job at the paper, now in your fourth year as a freelance journalist-photographer with a nose for corruption scandals and car wrecks.”

“But you still decided to see me.”

“
I figured you’re onto one of my corporate clients.”

“Fair enough
,” Ben said. “
But actually, I’m here abo
ut one of your pro bono clients—t
he Gathering of Holocaust Survivors.”

“A wonderful organization.”
Ginsburg
put down his cup.
“What do you want to know?”

“I
’m
researching
the proxy baptisms issue
.”

The lawyer’s face
hardened. “
Oh.
”

“
Weren’t you the lead counsel in negotiating
a settlement
agreement
with the Mormons
?
”

“A settlement? Three settlement
agreement
s
.
And th
ree
hundred
thousand
broken
commitmen
ts
.
Dealing with th
e
Saints
i
s
like tryi
ng to shake hands with a fish!”

“That’s harsh
.
”

“Let me show you something.” He turned to the door. “Barbara!
”

A moment later, his secretary appeared in
the door
with a writing pad.
“Yes, Mr. Ginsburg?”

“
Please bring in
the timeline
from the Gathering vs. LDS file.”

When she left, he gestured around the vast office. “You see all this? Fancy, isn’t it?”

Ben nodded.

“My parents
didn’t get to watch me grow up, become a man, start a family, build a law firm
. Do you know why?”
Ginsburg
pointed at a photo on the wall of a formally
dressed
young
couple with two kids—a toddler girl and a baby boy. “T
hey couldn’t get
out of Germany
. The US State Department didn’t want Jewish immigrants
, so m
y parents were stuck
in Hitler’s hell
. But my mother’s
older
sister was living in
Baltimore
and managed to
obtain
visas through an adoption agency
. M
y parents
put us on a train to Holland, w
here we
boarded
a ship
to
England
,
another one to
Newfoundland, and
then to
Baltimore
. My
sister was two, I was less than a year old. Can you comprehend what it took for
my parents
, who had already lost everything under the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, to give up their last precious possession
s
? T
o let go of
my sister and me
? To
send
their
cute and helpless
babies
across the
Atlantic
with
total
strangers
?”

Be
n shook his head
.

“The braves
t people
in that whole terrible
war
were parents like mine, giving
up
their children to save them
. T
o save us.” He blew his nose. “They died in Auschwitz
and we grew up with my aunt and uncle in a tiny apartment above their shoe store on Charles Street
.
I
always felt my parents’ presence, though. T
hey were watching me from
above
,
still do,
expecting me to work hard
and bring honor to their memory, to
the memory of m
y aunt and uncle,
may they
rest in peace
. They expect me to
be good to
my sister,
to
my wife and children,
to
my colleague
s
and
my clients.
”

The secretary returned, carrying an easel.
She set
it
up with a large poster, which had a list of
dates
down the left side with corresponding entries for each
one
.

“
For me, this case started in
ninety-
three
.
” G
insburg
pointed to the top entry. “
I had ser
ved voluntarily
for many years
as counsel for
an organization called
t
he Gathering of Holocaust Survivors
.
During one board meeting, someone mentioned rumors about Mormon baptisms of dead Jews. I thought it was a joke, but asked
a
former classmate
,
who had moved to
Salt Lake City
, to
search
the
archive
s. He
found my parents on the list of converts to the Church of
Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.”

“Your parents?”

“Yes! My
father and mother, whom the Germans murdered
for being Jews, were baptized by Mormon strangers
!
Can you think of
a
worse injustice?”

“No.”

He pointed to the next item on
the list. “
We sent investigators to Utah
and discovered it was a widespread operation
, directed from the top,
of baptizing Holocaust victims.
Lists of names
, which
Mormons
obtained from Nazi records of
death
camp
s, were processed at the LDS headquarters in Salt Lake City and assigned in batches
of names
to
Mormon
ward
s
, where
s
aints were put to work as proxies in baptismal baths and temple rituals for the dead. It was hard to believe
that thousands of otherwise
upstanding Americans
would engage in such
a
secret,
ghoulish enterprise!
”

“It’s odd.”

“I thought our investigators were exaggerating.
But when we approached
the Mormon leadership
with this information
, they didn’t deny it. On the contrary, they claimed it was
the
most charitable act imaginable
—saving souls!
We h
eld
a series of meetings
to explain to them
that
forced baptisms
represent pure evil
for Jewish people,
that o
ur whole history is filled with horrible suffering inflicted on us for our faith,
that for seventeen centuries, Christian popes, bishops, kings, and crusaders had tortured, burned, and killed
an
incalculable number of Jewish victims
for our refusal to convert, fo
r our denial of Christ as a true
messiah.
”

“That must have upset them,” Ben said.

“Not really.
They
were sympathetic and expressed a genuine desire to prevent any harm to the relationship between Mormons and Jews.
They accepted our conditions, and w
e
entered
into
a
detailed
settlement agreement
in ninety-five. They
promised to stop
all posthumous baptisms of Jews, other than
the deceased
family members
of
current members of the LDS Church. They also agreed to remove all the names of Holocaust victims who had already been baptized posthumously and delete all records of those
baptisms
.”

“Sounds like a good solution.”

“We were satisfied
, but our relief was premature
.” Ginsberg pointed to the
remaining
list of dates. “
R
esearche
r
s kept finding
Jewish
names—many thousands of names, and not only pre-ninety-five, but new baptisms. The
Mormons even
baptized Yitzhak Rabin a year after his assassination! Can you imagine? I called the lawyer representing the
LDS Church
and asked him wh
ich of Rabin’s
relatives
was
the
Mormon
who was eligible to submit the late prime minister’s name for baptism
.
After repeated inquiries, he called me back with an apology. But t
hen
we
found
out that
all other Israeli prime ministers from Ben Gurion onward,
including Golda Meir,
had been baptized, together with Israel’s
presidents, starting with Weitzman. The
Mormons
baptized the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl
, and many
other famous Jews, on top of thousands of Jews from lists they
continued to collect from
all over the world.
”