“Now when I walk the fields of the camp and see the ashes coming out of the earth, another soul has a name.”
Today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. It is a time to mourn and remember the six million victims of Nazi atrocities, as well as traumatized survivors and their families.
Many stories of remembrance are being shared today. One of these concerns beloved Canadian humanitarian, Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova, CC (1909-1990).
Lotta’s story
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Lotta Hitschmanova was perhaps the most famous woman in Canada. And yet, few today are aware of her tragic personal story.
Lotta was born in Prague in 1909 and grew up in a loving Jewish family. She became a journalist in the 1930s and was an outspoken critic of the Nazis. In 1938, she had to flee for her life and spent 4 years wandering about western Europe as a refugee. In 1942, she arrived penniless in Canada, “with an unpronounceable name” as she put it, feeling completely lost.
Three years later, in July 1945, Lotta heard the devastating news that both her parents had perished in the Holocaust. She wrote to a friend:
“I have lost the beings who are most dear to me.”
A month later, while still in deep despair, she founded the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada (USC Canada) and devoted the rest of her life to its humanitarian mission of peace.
“There’s only one thing: to work, so that their sacrifice may not be in vain.”
And thus from this terrible personal tragedy did Lotta’s 40 year journey of service to the poor, the displaced and the disadvantaged around the world begin.
Lotta’s humanitarian mission took her to so many conflict zones or newly independent countries around the world: to post WWII Europe, South Korea, Hong Kong, India, South and North Vietnam, Cyprus and many African countries.
Lotta and the Middle East
One area in particular stands out, as Lotta spent decades mobilizing Canadians to help Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
As a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust herself, Lotta would surely have felt empathy for those Jewish post-WWII refugees who, seeking a safe haven, emigrated to Palestine and later to Israel.
At the same time, her heart could not have been untouched by the armed conflicts and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.
Beyond that, unless further research comes to light, we don’t currently know how she felt about the broader political issues in the region.
But we do know what she thought about war. To her, war only brought more suffering, more victims. Here, she is quoted in the Regina Leader-Post, November 6, 1973, just days after the Yom Kippur War:
“War is no solution. It only creates new problems….but I continue to be an optimist, because I know how much can be achieved without war.”
Wise words, still so applicable in 2025.
Postscript
Marie-Jeanne Musiol worked with Lotta in the 1970s.
Almost 40 years later, long after Lotta’s death in 1990, she came to discover a heart-wrenching historical artifact of great significance to Lotta.
Here in her words are what she discovered:
“Recently, visiting the extermination camp at Auschwitz where I have been working as an artist for the past 15 years, I was struck to the core. In the suitcase room that I had seen so many times, I suddenly paid attention to the first suitcase at the very left of the pile in the showcase.
“On it, in the standard white lettering used on all suitcases, the name was that of Lotta’s mother – Else Hitschmann, Prag II, Sokolska 36, the same family home address given by Clyde Sanger on page 12 of his biography “Lotta”.
“Now when I walk the fields of the camp and see the ashes coming out of the earth, another soul has a name.”
David Rain