During the World War II, when his father was prisoned by nazis, he took part in the illegal resistance. Since 1946, he worked at the Czechoslovakia's mission at the United Nations in New York. After a communist coup d'etat in 1948 he decided to stay in the United States. He applied for the citizenship which he received in 1959. Whole his family including his father Pavol Fábry and his sister Olga, who also took a job in the United Nations, stayed in emigration.