Witness Professor Frantisek Janouch - a cherished memory of a miracle
For this week's Witness, the last before Christmas, we bring you the story of a dream come true. Professor Frantisek Janouch is one of Europe's foremost nuclear physicists. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he lost his job and five years later was driven into exile. In Sweden he founded the Charter 77 foundation, which played a huge role in helping dissidents back home in Czechoslovakia. Since the fall of communism the foundation has continued its work, now focusing on charity and cultural projects. Here Frantisek Janouch remembers one of the foundation's first post-Velvet Revolution campaigns: to pay for the introduction of gamma radiation equipment at Prague's Homolka Hospital.
Professor Frantisek Janouch
"When I'm thinking about the events which I've lived through, I think
that the one which was the most unexpected and most known now in the
country was the collection of money for the "Misha Account". In
1990 a boy, ten or eleven years old, Misha, from Slovakia, needed an
operation which was around 20 000 dollars and the operation could have
been done only in Sweden. After some thinking we collected money for this
operation. The boy was operated. He is now OK and is now twenty years old
or twenty-one. But we then got new applications for such an operation and
we couldn't raise 20 000 dollars each month or each week for a Slovak or
Czech kid. And then I got a crazy idea. What if we buy this instrument for
Prague. It was a miracle. I asked the minister of health. He said - yes,
we would be very pleased but it costs three million dollars and I have
only a couple of thousand dollars. And we raised a campaign which became
the largest collection of money in this country perhaps even succeeding
the collection of money for the National Theatre almost one-and-a-half
centuries ago when it was burnt down. We got contributions from several
million people and within twelve or fourteen months, we collected this sum
of money and we bought this instrument. It is installed at the hospital at
Homolka, and it became now one of the leading clinics in this field. There
are only 160 such instruments worldwide, and it was a miracle, you know,
that we succeeded, and it is really now one of the leading clinics. And we
have not forgotten the way how it came into being. We are now offering
poor kids from Ukraine free of charge operations, even transporting them
with the Czech Airlines free of charge to Prague, and providing them with
this operation. So I think this was one of the most unexpected curios, and
it was a memory which I cherish."
