Kurt Amplatz:
Transcript of Interview Excerpt

Kurt Amplatz, interviewed by Kirk Jeffrey on October 23, 2000 in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

“Well, originally, I came from Austria, and things were going very badly in Austria after the war [World War II]. We were occupied by Russia. We had very little to eat; as a matter of fact, 800 calories a day. I had been studying in Fribourg, Switzerland; Paris, France; and Zurich, Switzerland, so I thought it may be interesting to go to the United States.

My intention was only to stay one year, but after one year, I liked it so much that I took a year’s internship at Brooklyn, St. John’s Hospital in Brooklyn. Then I was looking for a residency program and I wrote thirty letters, and I got only one answer. That was the Mayo Clinic. So I flew there for an interview in the wintertime. I remember I landed in Rochester and it was snowing and people were so slow, and they talked so slowly, and I thought, I will never survive in a place like this.”