Confession of a Refugee

Confession of a Refugee - A Journey to the Unknown: August 21st 1968

By: Z. George Mesko, M.D.

The "leitmotiv" of this "confession" is the misfortune of a young physician, who with his family (children of 2 and 5 years old) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. On August 21st, 1968, the day of the invasion of the Red Army of USSR into Czechoslovakia - under cover of the night, he was in Yugoslavia on his way home from his vacation on the Adriatic. He, as a refugee, had to overcome incredible odds to get to the USA, the country of his hope and freedom.

About the Author

Z. George Mesko, M.D., Emeritus, Associate Professor of Medicine (Pediatric Cardiology) SUNY.
Fellow of American Academy of Pediatrics, Fellow of American Academy of Cardiology.
Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine, London.
Graduated from Medical School of J. A. Commenius in 1952 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

Z. G. Mesko, M.D. specialized in Pediatric Cardiology at the Children's Hospital in Kosice and Bratislava. In 1956, he was the Physician in Chief at the Heart Institute for Children in Sliac, Czechoslovakia. Fortuitously in 1960, he met a visiting Pediatrician from Boston, USA, who was surprised by the high level of professionalism of this Institution in a country behind the Iron Curtain. Through her efforts, he received an invitation for a Fellowship at the Children's Hospital in Boston at Harvard Medical School. This eventually, in 1968, saved his life when it provided him with a helping hand to enter the USA in 1969.Besides his specialization, he participated in significant charity work at the Gift of Life Foundation at St. Francis Hospital Heart Center in Roslyn N.Y. In 1987, at the initiative of Mrs. Nancy Reagan, his team went to South Korea and examined 500 children with heart disease out of which about 300 came to St. Francis Hospital Heart Center for corrective surgery, where he was the leading diagnostician before surgery. In 1990, he initiated the establishment of a Children's Heart Center in his native land, in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, supported by the Heart to Heart Foundation of the American-Slovak diaspora with a grant from the Agency of International Development administered by Project Hope.

In 1996, he retired and turned to writing, and published two books of political history on Communism and two books of personal oral history and his memoirs.

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