Lotta Hitschmanova as she began service as the Executive Director of the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada in October 1946.
If you live this side of the border of the Land of the Great White Grandmother, chances are that you never
heard of Lotta Hitschmanova. But you should learn about her. She was awesome.
Canadians of a certain age will
remember her for her once ubiquitous annual fund raising appeals on radio
and television and in smartly produced short films for the Unitarian
Service Committee of Canada (USCC) which she served as Executive
Director for many years.
Her story
begins in Prague when the Czech city was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire on November 28, 1909. Her
birth name was Lotte Hitschmann. Her father was a prosperous malt merchant and the secularized Jewish family lived in modest wealth and comfort.
She was a gifted student who excelled at the progressive and co-educational Stephans Gymnasium. She studied philosophy and mastered several European languages at the University of Prague and then went on
to study political science and journalism at the Sorbonne in hopes of entering a career in international diplomacy.
In 1935 Lotte returned to Prague
where she completed her Ph.D. studies
and launched a successful career as
a freelance journalist often
contributing material to Czechoslovak,
Rumanian, and Yugoslav newspapers. As the menace of Hitler and Nazism rose
she became noted for her outspoken anti-fascist beliefs and articles. By
1938 she changed her name to the Slavic
Lotta Hitschmanova as a protest to German
hegemonic ambitions.
When
Germany annexed the Sudetenland Hitschmanova learned that she was
on a list of hostile journalists to be detained. She was forced to flee her homeland
leaving her parents and a younger sister behind. She first fled to back to
Paris and from there she went to Brussels, Belgium, where she resumed
her journalistic career. But the war
kept catching up with her and for the next few years she alternated
between a variety of journalism and humanitarian jobs while often
finding herself a stateless refugee. By late 1941 she was in Marseilles in Vichy France
where she worked as a secretary at charity for refugees. It paid
next to nothing and the tiny woman fainted
on the streets of starvation after
which she was taken to a clinic run
by Unitarian Service Committee.
It was a fortuitous
match. Soon she was volunteering her services with the USC as a translator and then as a liaison
officer with the Czech relief agency,
Centre d’Aide Tsechoslovaque. Her work was valued by the USC, but officials
recognized that she was still in danger.
In 1942 they arranged her escape from
Europe via Lisbon on a converted freighter crammed with other
refugees and headed to New York.
Like many Jewish refugees even with
the help of the USC, Hitschmanova could
not gain permanent refuge in the U.S.
After stopping in Boston to deliver highly sensitive documents
detailing the dangerous work of the USC in Europe, she went to Canada,
which offered her asylum.
She later recalled “exhausted, with
a feeling of absolute solitude in an entirely strange country...I came with $60
in my pocket. I had an unpronounceable name. I weighed less than 100 lbs, and I
was completely lost.” Yet relentlessly resourceful, within two days she found
employment as a secretary and three
months later was in Ottawa where she
worked as a Department of War Services
postal censor. She read the letters
of German prisoners of war and
scoured them for useful military
intelligence.
Still deeply impressed by the
selfless work of the USC, Hitschmanova
joined the Unitarian Church of Ottawa.
She also continued her work for refugees with the Czechoslovakian National Alliance and
by raising money for Czech War Services
in London. She regularly contributed
articles to the Canadian press and made speeches
on behalf of her causes. Toward the end
of the war she went to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
All during
the war she never gave up a desperate search for her parents and sister Lilly. She learned that
for a while her parents were held at Terezin,
a model concentration camp used as a
showplace for the Red Cross and international diplomats. Then she got the devastating news that they
had been taken from that relative comfort and safety and had died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Eventually she
located her sister living in Palestine with
her husband. Both eventually joined her
in Canada.
With no family to return to, Hitschmanova decided to remain in
Canada. She turned down several
excellent job offers. Instead, she
determined to serve the uprooted refugees still in Europe. In July 1945, she helped to organize
the Canadian branch of the Unitarian
Service Committee, which was affiliated with both American Unitarian Association and the Unitarian Church in Canada. Senator Cairine Wilson, a liberal icon in Canada, was named the Honorary Chairwoman, but as Executive Director, Hitschmanova ran the show with systematic
energy and efficiency.
At first
registered under the War Charities Act
the Canadian committee was restricted
to fundraising only through Unitarian congregations and to individual
Unitarians. When the law changed in
February 1946 Hitschmanova
energetically began her public appeals citing the great need. At first funds were directed to
Czechoslovakia and France.
That
spring she made her first annual tour to inspect the work in the field. She adopted a military style uniform
modeled after that worn by American WACs. She found the outfits useful in
gaining admission to even restricted areas. Besides they were comfortable and made
packing for her extended trips easy.
She wore the uniforms at home and abroad for the rest of her life. They became her trademark as she rose
as a public figure in Canada.
Despite
her affection for the Boston based USC, it didn’t take long for her to come
into conflict with its leadership. They insisted that all field operations
be headed by an American. She
felt that those on the ground and familiar with the situation
knew best. She preferred to empower local
partner organizations and their leadership by providing them with needed
funds and perhaps technical support.
Her secondary goal was to make those partner organizations self-sustaining
and independent as quickly as possible.
There are three basic principles in the field of the art of
giving aid. To come as an open-minded friend and good listener, when offering
help; to say goodbye to a project when it can continue on its own; to serve
with a personal touch, because a relationship of confidence must lift your aid
beyond the realm of a simple business proposition and prove that you really
care.
To accommodate that philosophy in
1948 she re-organized the Canadian
Committee completely independent of
not only the Boston based USC, but of the Canadian churches as well. Despite its independent status, the USC
Canada continued to draw support and volunteers from Unitarian congregations
and most proudly considered it “ours.”
The current logo of the Unitarian Service Committee Canada.
In the first full year of operations
in 1946, Hitschmanova set a pattern
which she would repeat yearly—three months of intense fund-raising in
Canada, four months overseas to supervise programs and investigate possible new
partners, and months at home reporting on her findings and producing an annual film about the Committee’s
achievements. That first year she raised
$40,000 and collected 30,000 kg of clothing
for distribution in the refugee
camps.
She particularly homed in on the needs of children, making a project to
supply prosthetic limbs to maimed victims a high priority, and
establishing one of the first adopt-a-child
sponsorship programs that became a model for many others.
Hitschmanova
with Korean orphans on one of her annual world-girdling inspection tours
of USCC humanitarian aid projects. The organization expanded beyond
Europe to include projects like this in Korea and others in India,
Africa, and serving Palestinian refugees.
She found
herself showered with honors. According
to a biographical sketch in the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist
Biography by Joyce Thierry:
Dr. Hitschmanova received numerous awards, including the
1975 Woman of the Year for India by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. By this time,
grateful governments around the world had acknowledged her work in their
countries in a variety of ways: the Chevalier of Public Health from the
Government of France and the Gold Medal from the Red Cross of France, 1950; the
Medal of St. Paul from Greece, 1952; Public Service Medal from the Government
of South Korea, 1962; Athena Mesolora Gold Medal from the Government of Greece,
1967; Officer of the Order of Canada, 1972; the Royal Bank of Canada Award,
1979; and Companion of the Order of Canada, 1980. In 1983, she received Officer
of Meritorious Order of Mohlomi, Lesotho, and was only the third person to be
given the Rotary Award for World Understanding. She refused to accept honorary
doctorates from universities, saying she had worked hard enough in Paris and
Prague to earn her own doctorate.
In 1982 after 37 years at the helm,
ill health finally forced Hitschmanova to retire. Sadly in her remaining years she suffered
from Alzheimers. She died of cancer on August 1, 1990 at the age of 79. She was widely
mourned across Canada and by the hundreds of thousands whose lives she
touched around the world. Her memorial service was held at her
beloved Ottawa Unitarian Church.
In perhaps an even more profound tribute to her vision the
modern Unitarian Universalist Service
Committee, heir to the old
Boston based organization, now follows Hitschmanova’s model of partnering and
nurturing organizations on the ground.
