Jenny from Slovakia : A hard choice to leave family behind on a journey of no return

Jenny or Yenni was born into a Hungarian family in the eastern part of Slovakia, then part of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Jenny was a child when Soviet tanks occupied her home town of Kosice, and then grew up as part of the first generation of "socialist youth" in post-war Czechoslovakia.  Things were going well until the "Prague Spring", initiated by the Slovak President of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, an exciting period of unprecedented freedom and possibility for the people of Czechoslovakia.  This was crushed in 1969 when Soviet tanks and army rumbled into Czechoslovakia and when arrests started at her work, Jenny made the decision to get the family out of the country.   As Jenny recounts in this interview, leaving her grandmother, knowing they would never meet again, was the bitter side of her escape. The family was able to get to Vienna and eventually apply for asylum to Australia and Jenny and her family arrived in Hobart in 1969 with just a few suitcases and very little English.    Although it took Jenny several years to become truly proficient at English, she was eventually able to write several books based on her life experiences, which recount both life in Czechoslovakia and the experiences of being a new migrant in 1970s Tasmania. https://www.amazon.com/Eugenia-Jenny-Williams/e/B004PEW6YA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share