Back to Family Story outcomes, S22

by Shannon Friday

The Beginning

When the revolution broke out in Hungary in 1956, a quarter million Hungarians fled to Austria and established refugee camps there. My grandmother, Irene, and her sister, Liz, were two of them.

The U.S. Congress granted admittance into the U.S. without green cards for 40,000 refugees and Irene and Liz were two lucky people to get to come to the U.S. They arrived at McGuire Airbase in New Jersey on 22 March 1957. Ancestry was able to help me out and showed this as a hint. It provided me with a list of arriving passengers from Vienna, Austria that included my grandmother and her sister. Being an immigrant in this country at that time was a struggle for both Liz and Irene, causing them to find new ways to embrace their new culture.

Beyond The Struggle

When my grandmother came over, she was 15 years old. She was taken in by the Sisters of Assumption and finished her high school career at Raven Hill High school. When she graduated high school, a friend of the Sisters allowed offered Irene an amazing opportunity. She was able to work and in exchange she was able to study at Saint Joseph University on a free ride at night. She soon after met my grandfather, working as hard as they both could while still being students.