September 1950

Four displaced persons from Latvia, Estonia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, attended Vassar on scholarships provided by the trustees and with support from funds provided by donations from every student in the college. In an article in the Vassar Alumnae Magazine Professor of History Alma Luckau pointed out that the history of Vassar’s international students was a reflection of the history of European upheavals. In the 1920s, most of the students came from countries created in 1919, which needed educational leadership. “In the 1930s Vassar College gave asylum to innumerable refugees from countries overrun by the Nazis…. In the early 1940s we educated the daughters of anti-Nazi statesmen and resistance leaders…from countries conquered by the armies of Hitler. Since 1945 we have had students from as many as 20 different countries in one year, among them a few of the new type of refugees, from communist-dominated countries.”

Vassar Alumnae Magazine