Milan Šamánek

“I got to America so that a world treasurer of a certain world institution arrived here, and it was supposed to hold a congress here. He came and asked the organizers, who did something here, so they sent him along, among other things. At that time I worked at the Institute of Blood Circulation Diseases in Krč. And he looked at it and said, ´Well, I quite like what you are doing. Could you come and work with me? I could give you a job for you for three months.´ And I said to myself, at that time going to America from here was absolutely unimaginable. So I told him: ´Well, you know, professor, I'd love to. But it's complicated here, the exit clauses and all that you do not know these things at all any more.´ And he said: ´Well, I'm talking to your president tomorrow, so I'll tell him to let you go.´ And then he called me and said, ´Oh, your president said that these young people are leaving for there ...´ So I was shocked, because I never officially heard of anyone he would ever had gone to America. Well, so I got to America in the year 1963.”

“I started going to school, I normally began attending school in Zborovice. Back then during the Protectorate it was then the main school. I finished my studies there. Well, I was studying, so I was attending it. And then I finished, it was after the war and they asked who wanted to go to the gymnasium. Because I learned quite well, I was recommended to the grammar school. And I got to the gymnasium in Kroměříž. There they were doing tests and selecting students, who would come to fourth or fifth grade. You know what that was. And we should all have gone to the fourth. But they had too few students in the fifth grade, so those who did the best tests were put into the fifth. So my whole life was actually a year younger than my classmates.”