After 4 years of wandering around Europe as a refugee, Lotta Hitschmanova applied for a visa to immigrate to America.

She was rejected, but in January 1942, she received the following message in a telegram, as related by Lotta’s biographer, Clyde Sanger:

“Hitschmanova Canadian duration visa granted.”

Lotta’s first reaction was one of disappointment that she had failed to get the American visa:

“I felt sorry not to join my friends in the States, and was afraid of leaving for a country that was entirely unknown to me.

I also thought that I would be of no use to our refugees in Canada, and that I could make much propaganda in New York, by simply telling the tragic situation I had seen from so near.”

The whole social history of Canada might have been written very differently if Lotta had in fact received that American visa she so deeply sought.

Click here to read more on how Lotta became a refugee who changed Canada.

David Rain