It is the early-1970s. You are sitting in front of the television watching MAS*H when the show goes to commercial.
Video clips of people affected by starvation and disease in a Developing Country appear on your screen.
The voice of a woman with a Czech accent comes on and tells you of the suffering elsewhere in the world and ends the message with an appeal for donations.
USC
56 Sparks Street
Ottawa.
For two generations that address, and voice, sought assistance to help the world recover from drought, war, disease and poverty.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the story of a woman that changed the world, Lotta Hitschmanova!
Lotta Hitschmanova enjoyed an idyllic life until war tore it apart and she spent the rest of her life helping others in the same position.
That life of charity began on Nov. 28, 1909, in Prague, Bohemia, now known as the Czech Republic.
Born to Max Hitschmann and Else Theiner, the family also included a little sister named Lilly.
At the time of her birth, the Kingdom of Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the family was relatively well-off because her father was a malt merchant who owned several factories in the suburbs of the city.
On 28 July 1914 the First World War began, and the Empire allied with Germany. During this time politician Tomáš Masaryk advocated for Czech independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following the defeat of Germany and Austro-Hungary, the Kingdom of Bohemia was dissolved and became Czechoslovakia in 1918.
At the age of ten, Lotta was now a citizen of a brand-new country.
By her 30th birthday, it would be ripped apart by the dawn of another war. But before we get to that Lotta enrolled at the University of Prague in 1929 to study philosophy. She was an exceptional student with a skill for languages, and over the next three years she learned German, English, French and Spanish.
Following graduation in 1932, she attended the Sorbonne Institute in Paris where she earned diplomas in French Studies and Journalism before returning to Prague in 1935 to work as a journalist while finishing her PhD in Philosophy.
At the time, Nazi Germany was rising in power right next door and Lotta was unafraid of writing anti-Nazi articles for several newspapers as well as the Yugoslavian government news agency.
Most people in Czechoslovakia were uneasy about the growing threat next door, but things quickly changed on Sept. 17, 1938, when Germany started a low-intensity war.
Hoping to avoid a larger conflict, Britain, and France formally asked Czechoslovakia to cede part of its Sudetenland territory which had a population of three million people, mostly of German descent to Germany on Sep 20.
Ten days later, on Sept. 30, with military pressure from Germany and diplomatic pressure by Britain and France, Czechoslovakia agreed to the Munich Agreement, and ceded the territory.
The world breathed a sigh of relief as war was briefly averted….
But Lotta could see the writing on the wall and knew that Germany was not going to stop.
She made the difficult decision to leave her homeland for good and moved to Belgium while her parents stayed behind.
She quickly found work as a journalist in Brussels as the threat of war increased.
As Lotta had suspected, The Munich Agreement didn’t stop German expansion and on Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting the Second World War.
Then, after rampaging through eastern Europe, Germany turned its attention west and in May 1940 it invaded Belgium over the course of 18 days.
Lotta fled to the south of France where she found a new home in Marseille, and watched as the Nazis took over Paris and northern France.
Unable to be a journalist, Lotta took a job at an immigration service where she assisted refugees like herself.
I couldn’t find an exact date but one day while waiting at a Marseille market, Lotta fainted from hunger and fatigue. After she regained consciousness, she made her way to a medical clinic run by a charity group called Unitarian Service Committee which changed her life forever.
Formed in May 1940, the Unitarian Service Committee, or USC, was based out of Boston and helped European refugees flee Nazi persecution.
It was run by the Unitarians Christians which believe that Jesus Christ was the savior of humankind and was inspired by God but not equal to Him.
The organization set up clinics and aid stations throughout France and one of those clinics offered Lotta medical attention.
When she got back on her feet, she went back to her work but remembered the foreign charity service that helped people like her.
And over time, serving others became a growing desire.
But first, Lotta had to help herself.
She had to get out of Europe.
In late-1942, Lotta boarded a boat with over 500 other refugees in Lisbon, Portugal, and sailed across the ocean to the United States.
It was a difficult journey.
Water ran short, and measles spread, but Lotta still found light in the darkness. She said later in her life,
“In the evenings, the air was filled with the songs of many lands.”
She briefly stopped at the USC headquarters in Boston, before departing for Canada because they had given her a visa where the US had not.
Lotta arrived in Montreal, where she felt a stranger in a strange land. quote
“I reached Montreal 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 pounds, and I was completely lost.”
Lotta was too smart, and too driven, to be lost for long.
Four days after she arrived, she picked up a secretarial job at and three months later, Lotta was in Ottawa working as a postal censor for the Department of War Services where she did what she could to raise money to help people back home.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. When the Allies liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, and the world learned the horrors of the Nazi Final Solution program, Lotta learned something as well.
Her parents were among the 1.1 million killed. There was nothing left for her in Czechoslovakia.
She wrote to a friend,
“If I tell you that nobody is waiting for me any longer, that I have lost the beings that are most dear to me, you will measure my despair, for you have the same sorrow.”
From then on, Lotta made it her life’s mission to help others and started by organizing a Canadian branch of the USC.
She became the driving force of the organization and was the executive director and Cairine Wilson was an honorary chairperson.
Wilson became the first female senator in Canadian history and helped bring Jewish refugees to Canada during the war, I shared her story in 2023, so be sure to check that episode out.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1946, Lotta toured Western Canada for three months sharing the needs of other countries and raising funds to help people in war-torn Europe.
Her efforts raised $40,000 and 30,000 kilograms of clothing.
In the summer of 1946, she went to Europe where she saw children maimed by war.
Upon her return to Canada, she focused on helping those children.
Over the next year, the Canadian USC branch raised funds, food, and prosthetic limbs for children in Europe and started a foster parent program, where Canadians could sponsor a specific child and receive their photo and story.
In 1948, Lotta severed formal ties with the USC based in Boston because she wanted the Canadian chapter to be non-denominational, and free from interference so she could aid wherever was needed immediately.
The Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, or USC Canada, was officially formed in 1949.
Beginning in the 1950s, Lotta spent three months raising funds in Canada t, and four months overseas supervising USC activities.
She said of her efforts,
“We are here in this world to help each other, and to make this world a better place to live. That is my philosophy in life.”
During this time, she adopted her signature homemade uniform, modelled on the uniforms of American army nurses.
It was olive green in the winter and khaki in the summer. Both versions had the word ‘Canada’ stitched onto the lapel along with badges from the USC.
They were lightweight and easy to transport, and allowed Lotta to cross borders and get into refugee camps because they looked like a military uniform.
Many UN refugee camps required some sort of uniform for officials to enter, and her homemade military outfit fit that purpose.
As she raised funds and increased USC’s endeavors, television was also on the rise and Lotta used the medium to her full advantage.
She was a trained journalist and knew how to get media coverage by crafting a good story for radio and tv, making it impossible for Canadians to resist donating money.
Her commercials became a staple, to the point that some may not remember their childhood address, but they can recite the USC Canadian address without fail.
after a visit to Bihar, India. She said,
“Every hour, children and adults are dying in Bihar. Hunger and thirst do not kill instantly, as a hand grenade does, or an earthquake. This dying inch by inch is much more cruel.”
She was able to paint these stories because she spent so much of the year meeting those in need.
Once she saw a girl in the Middle East wearing a shirt with so many patches it was hard to tell what the shirt looked like originally, she gave the girl two new shirts in exchange for the old one.
She took the old shirt back to Canada and used it to fundraise for children in the Middle East by showing the clothes some of them were forced to wear.
In another incident, after visiting Greece she saw babies with newspapers as diapers.
She started an effort to raise flannelette, a napped cotton fabric, hoping to get eight kilometres Canadians gave 30 kilometres.
After crop failure in Korea in 1953, she raised $100,000 to help.
Five years later in 1958, the United Nations asked her to supply 25,000 layettes, or baby clothes, for Middle East children.
She organized Canada’s largest baby shower, and the so-called Layette Lift was a massive success, with donations poured in from coast-to-coast.
Lotta had a unique drive and a fierce ability to get news coverage by calling journalists anytime, day or night, if she felt their newspaper had not given her fundraising events the coverage they deserved.
There are stories of some journalists hiding under their desks when Lotta came into the newsroom, to avoid having to interview her.
Despite being just over five feet tall, and barely weighing more than 100 pounds, Lotta was a force to be reckoned with.
While journalists tried to avoid her, Canadians responded to her pleas without fail.
After the Six Days War, between a coalition of Arab states and Israel, in 1967.
Lotta travelled to six Palestinian refugee camps and wrote a report which was published in Canadian newspapers.
The Canadian response was overwhelming. British Columbia donated 16,300 kilograms of evaporated milk while Ontario gave 4,000 pairs of shoes which were sent to refugee camps.
Macleans wrote a feature on her in 1967, stating that for 22 years she had helped people stave off hunger, cold and disease. quote “Now 54, her once flaming red hair greying, she shows no signs of letting up.”
That was very much the case.
During that year alone, she distributed food and clothing to South Korea, still reeling from the Korean War a decade and a half earlier.
Then she went to China to distribute milk to villagers, followed by a trip to a USC Clinic where she launched a program to give medical aid and assistance to orphans.
It seemed she never stopped working and by the end of 1967, USC Canada had raised $4 million and 12.5 million pounds of food. As she moved into her 60s, Lotta kept up her efforts as new areas of the world saw the impacts of war.
She witnessed the carnage of the Yom Kippur War fought from 6 to 25 October 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states and told Canadians,
“War is no solution. It only creates problems, but I continue to be an optimist because I know how much can be achieved without war.”
Canadians donated food, clothes, and funds to help refugees.
Lotta say when asked why we should help other countries before helping ourselves,
“Charity begins at home and then it goes on to embrace next door neighbours and all those who need help.”
Lotta made sure that as much money as possible went to helping people and became legendary for her thriftiness.
She only bought second-hand office equipment for the organization and refused to buy fire or theft insurance until 1958.
She once complained about the purchase of too many cookies for a reception in Winnipeg.
She routinely refused salary increases.
For most of her time as the head of USC Canada, she made $6,000 even as inflation rose.
In 1949, that pay was worth $77,800 in 2024 funds.
By the 1980s, it was worth $50,000 less.
She also refused to buy a car Even though she travelled 84,000 kilometres around the world each year.
On Canadian tours, she averaged 150 speeches in three months, and visited 50 USC Canada branches, work groups and collection centres.
When she was home in Ottawa, she arrived at the office at 8 a.m., had a sandwich and coffee at her desk for lunch, and continued to work until 6 p.m.
Then she went home, had dinner in her small apartment, and went back to the office at 7 p.m. to work until midnight.
Only in 1964 did she begin to take two weeks vacation per year.
One staffer said that nothing else mattered to her other than starving children freezing somewhere.
During those long office hours, she sent out pleas for donations, wrote thousands of thank you letters, and planned trips abroad down to the smallest detail.
John Boss with the CBC wrote that he saw one report from a trip that was 115 single-spaced pages.
quote
“She anticipates all the questions and supplies all the answers down to the last detail.”
Columnist Elmore Philpott called Lotta a one-woman army.
Lotta didn’t agree, she said.
“Over half a million Canadians who loyally support USC Canada deserve the credit. Without them, I would be helpless.”
Lotta expected those around her to have the same drive and work ethic she had and was a demanding boss, a perfectionist that did not tolerate mistakes.
She knew what the people suffering were going through and expected that level of commitment from those around her.
She said,
“I experienced personally how much it hurts to be hungry. To be a refugee, to be without a home, to be without friends. And this is something dreadful. You have no more roots, you have no one to turn to.”
Lotta w was so committed that she had few friends outside of the organization. She never married, nor had children.
She said,
“It is when I think of the youngsters that I truly feel I am the mother of 2,000 children.”
She became a friend to those in need. Those who were alone had her, and they called her.
Godmother of Canada.
Mother of a Thousand Children.
World Orphans Mother.
But…giving so much of herself came at a cost. She said,
“Very often, I am haunted by what I see during the day. And so, at night, I am alone, and I think back, and it is difficult to sleep and forget.”
CBC journalist John Buss witnessed her torment quote,
“I saw her walk out of a peasant’s shack in India to get hold of herself before going back in because of a tubercular child dying under such conditions.”
Yet, she kept working to help even as what she saw tore at her soul.
By 1980, it all began to catch up with Lotta.
The trips became harder, the long hours more difficult.
Her health slowly declined, as she realized all good things come to an end and in 1982, Lotta made the difficult decision to retire after four decades of dedicated service.
The Regina Leader-Post wrote,
“Few among us are able to retire at the conclusion of a career of intense and selfless dedication matching that of Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova.”
Under her leadership, USC Canada raised $128.5 million from the late-1940s to the early-1980s.
Throughout her career, Lotta was honoured for her service.
In 1969 she was one of the first Canadians to receive the Order of Canada.
She received the Gold Medal from the French Red Cross, the Medal of St. Paul from Greece, the UN Headquarters Medal and the Decoration of Order and Peace.
But as the 1980s went on, without USC Canada to focus on and with her health deteriorating, Lotta retreated into herself.
Alzheimer’s began to take hold.
Lotta was seen wandering along Sparks Street, in Ottawa unable to find her way home.
Colleague Harry Bolster said,
“It is a sad thing, looking at her whole life, that she had so little in the end.”
Eventually, she was put into a retirement home when she could no longer live on her own in her apartment.
By the last year of her life, Lotta barely talked.
The voice that was instantly recognizable to millions of Canadians had gone silent.
But not forgotten.
Biographer Clyde Sanger wrote,
“Some people remember her as a dragon to work for because she expected so much of them, but I remember going to visit her and seeing all the flowers in her room.”
Chrysanthemums, her favourite flower, bathed her room in yellow, her favorite colour, until her last days.
On Aug. 1, 1990, Lotta died of cancer.
The day after, she was cremated and 225 people attended her memorial.
Colleague Pam McRae said,
“She had an element of sincerity about her that I think is very rare.”
In 1991, Agriculture Canada named a new oat variety, AC Lotta Oat, and her signature homemade uniform is now preserved at the Canadian War Museum.
In 2013, the Canadian Museum of History conducted a poll to determine who shaped Canada the most.
Lotta finished first.
After she left, organization she founded, USC Canada, changed its name to SeedChange and if you’re wondering you can still find it at that famous address:
56 Sparks Street.
Ottawa.
AND We may also be seeing a lot more of Lotta in the future.
She is one of eight shortlisted individuals to be on the Canadian $5 banknote.
But there is one more thing you should know about Lotta, and it’s her connection to a British international man of mystery by the name of Austin Powers.
Actor, comedian Mike Myers grew up in Scarborough, and he never forgot the voice on the commercial urging him to send donations to:
56 Sparks Street.
Ottawa.
He said, the image of the tiny woman in her army uniform became burned in his memory.
quote
“She spoke with a Dracula accent and wore a self-made paramilitary uniform. She scared the BLANK out of me. Was she in the army? Was she in her own army? Why did she talk like a vampire?”
Myers immortalized Lotta as one of his most iconic characters.
Frau Farbissina.
In Austin Powers, Frau Farbissina has a similar haircut, uniform and accent as Lotta.
Instead of working for USC Canada, Frau Farbissina was the head of the militant wing of the Salvation Army.
Lotta’s also inspired a name in the film…
