The 16-year-old student left a refugee camp in Austria and arrived in the States in April 1957. At first the IRC found foster parents for him, and soon after he started his studies at Montgomery Junior College, and was on the Dean’s list of the best students of the college in several years. Later he received a scholarship to the New School for Social Research in New York, but after two years he left the prestigious school and, against the advice of his mentors, joined the military, where he continued his studies with a military scholarship.