Wallace Toronto — Joseph Fielding Smith's Prophecy of Safe Passage

In August 1939, as the threat of World War II loomed, Mission President Wallace Toronto was in Prague attempting to evacuate Latter-day Saint missionaries from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. His wife, Martha Toronto, had reached Denmark with the family, but communications were cut off and the Nazis were seizing control of the country's transportation. In Denmark, Elder Joseph Fielding Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — who had toured the Czech mission only weeks earlier — assured the anxious Martha that the war would not start until her husband and the missionaries were all safely evacuated.

True to the prophetic word, Wallace Toronto and the last missionaries crossed out of the shrinking Nazi domain and arrived in Denmark on the evening of August 31, 1939. The next morning, September 1, Hitler invaded Poland and the war began, with the Nazis immediately taking full control of the remaining escape routes. The promise had held to the day.

Research note: No verbatim first-person excerpt of Elder Smith's assurance is available in a public archival source, so none is reproduced here. The account is documented in Kahlile Mehr, "Czech Saints: A Brighter Day," Ensign, August 1994, 46, an article that draws on the Toronto family's records; and in Mary Jane Woodger, Mission President or Spy? (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2019), which chronicles the Torontos' August 1939 escape.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

The day finally came when all trains, ferries, and boats made their last runs from Germany and we prayed that Wally [President Toronto] and his four young charges would be on that last ferry as it headed for its home port. Seeing that I was very worried and getting more upset by the minute, President Smith came over to me, put his protecting arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Sister Toronto, this war will not start until Brother Toronto and his missionaries arrive in this land of Denmark.’ As the day advanced into early evening, a telephone call came. … It was Wally!