h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's very popular these days to blame immigrants for the ills of society. They come to our country and claim our benefits, or take our jobs and our houses.

But you don't have to look very far in your family history to find hard working, law-abiding immigrants. Take my mother-in-law. She was Hungarian, of Jewish family, though she rejected all religion. She was born in the rural south of the country but her family moved to Budapest. In those days, she might have been regarded as a blue-stocking, because she loved studying, particularly science and she got a PhD in Chemistry and Physics at Budapest University.
There was always antisemitism in Hungary and, when the Nazis moved into Austria, my mother-in-law must have realised that it was a good time to leave. She saw a description of a product by Laporte, in England and she wrote to say she thought she could improve it. They offered her a job but, by the time she came to take it up, war had broken out. She made a difficult and complicated journey across Europe. At Laporte, she developed an industrial clay product, called Laponite, now widely used in industry.

So her work benefitted the British economy. And if she had stayed in Hungary, she might have died in a concentration camp, as some of her friends did. Although she was not uncritical of Britain, she was clear it was a better place for her to be than Hungary.

Why don't you expand this and use it for a February Create challenge? She sounds like a brilliant woman who should be shared. What a mother-in-law to have!

Thanks Elektra. I'll think about it. I haven't decided what to do for February's Create yet.