LDS Place

Christmas means peace. Four years ago this month, I was in Switzerland. At that time Russian tanks were rolling down the streets of Budapest, Hungary, and students were being slaughtered with machine-gun fire. I stood that December day in the railroad station in Berne, Switzerland. At eleven o’clock in the morning, every church bell in Switzerland began to ring, and at the conclusion of that ringing every vehicle stopped—every car on the highway, every bus, every railroad train. That great, cavernous station became deathly still. I looked out the front door across the plaza. Men working on the hotel across the street stood on the scaffolding with bared heads. Every bicycle stopped, and every man and woman and child dismounted and stood with bared, bowed head. Then, after three minutes of reverent pause, trucks, great convoys of them, began to roll from Geneva and Berne and Basle and Zurich toward the Austrian border, and across Austria to the Hungarian border, laden with supplies—food, clothing and bedding. The gates of Switzerland were thrown open to refugees. As I stood there that December morning, I could not help marveling at the miraculous contrast: the devil incarnate as represented by the oppressive power of the Communists mowing down students on the streets of Budapest in contrast with the spirit of a Christian people in the land of Switzerland who bowed their heads in reverence, then rolled up their sleeves to provide succor and salvation.

—Gordon B. Hinckley, BYU Speeches, December 14, 1960