LDS leaders helped spur big changes in Europe

SALT LAKE CITY — Benson, McKay, Kimball, Hinckley, Monson, Nelson.

These names highlight a long list of LDS Church prophets, apostles and general authorities whose service to former communist-controlled countries in central and eastern Europe were critical during the tense and tenuous four-plus decades following World War II.

In an era defined by the phrases "Cold War" and "Iron Curtain," leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were reaching out to perceived unreachable nations, showing concern for clusters of members there and trying to open doors in closed-off countries.

The LDS Church's three-member First Presidency today includes two men with close ties to those areas — President Thomas S. Monson, whose nurturing to church membership and church efforts in the former German Democratic Republic began in 1968; and his second counselor in the First Presidency, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a native of the former Czechoslovakia and post-war adolescent refugee whose life path took him to both sides of Germany.

The first post-World War II visit by an LDS leader was certainly the longest, as Elder Ezra Taft Benson spent nearly the entire year of 1946 traveling on a relief assignment throughout war-devastated Europe.

The future LDS president supervised the distribution of thousands of tons of much-needed church welfare supplies, including stops in the "Russian Zone of Occupation" — central and eastern European areas that soon would be nations under communist domain.

LDS Church presidents making visits behind the Iron Curtain included President David O. McKay's speaking at a June 1952 Berlin conference at which many East Germany members were allowed to attend, and Spencer W. Kimball's 1977 landmark stops in Poland and Dresden, GDR.

And while it came a decade after the fall of communism in Europe, President Gordon B. Hinckley's 2002 trip to Ukraine and Russia was still nonetheless historic. In speaking at LDS meetings in Kiev and Moscow that each drew thousands of members, President Hinckley became the church's first president to visit the former Soviet Union.

President Monson's extensive work in the former German Democratic Republic since the late 1960s — beginning when he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve — has been well-documented, with his East Germany experiences and anecdotes sprinkled into his addresses and writings over the years.

While developing relationships with GDR officials during his 20-year assignment overseeing East Germany, President Monson's highlights include: