Born in Brno, which was then part of Moravia and Bohemia, and which became part of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Podoski fled the country in 1938 when it was annexed by Germany. In 1940 she arrived in the United States with her husband, an American citizen.
After her husband was drafted to fight in World War II, Lauwers (her name at the time) joined the Women’s Army Corps. Because she was fluent in English, German, Czech, Slovak, and French, she was one of the few women selected to join the newly formed Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA — the Central Intelligence Agency. Her OSS records, which were only declassified last year, show that she was deployed to North Africa and then Rome to interrogate captured enemy soldiers.
When a Nazi sergeant told her that Czechs and Slovaks were used for “dirty work” assignments, Lauwers wrote a flyer in both Czech and Slovak languages to tell the soldiers they were being used by the Germans. “Shed this German yoke of shame, cross over to the partisans,” she wrote. Within a week more than 600 of them surrendered to Allied forces. The tactic was considered one of the most successful psychological campaigns of the war, and she was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war she worked for the Voice of America, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Library of Congress, where she was a research analyst. She stayed at the latter post for 20 years, and retired in 1968. She died in Washington D.C. on August 16 at 95.