Thread by @MaxRingham

As plenty of people have been sharing stories about Brexit may affect their lives I would like to share one from my family.

This beautiful woman is my mother. It is her 81st birthday today.

She was born in Munster in Germany, in 1938 a year before the start of WW2. Her parents - a Polish Latin professor and a German woman - called her Felizitas, but in that climate non traditional names were discouraged, so she was christened Hedwig.

She remembers little of the war. She was evacuated for the last part of it, and when her family returned to Munster it had been obliterated by bombing. What remained of the family home had been occupied by another family who refused to leave.

They stayed instead in their Grandmother’s tiny flat in the outskirts, sharing it with four other families. And they starved. There was nothing in the town and they survived on Nettle soup and scraps. Her sister developed rickets through malnutrition.

Like everyone, she was fully aware of the world's anger at Germany and recalls hearing talk on the radio about how it should be raised and left a desert in retaliation for its crimes. She was 7 and could not understand how they could be hated when they were suffering so much.

Slowly with the help of the Americans, then the French & British Germany was rebuilt. My mother grew up. She excelled at school and was bright and popular. She developed a love of languages and after leaving school took a job as an au pair first in Switzerland and then in Paris.

She loved Paris and soaked it all up, becoming fluent very quickly.
She went to the Art galleries. She went to the Jazz clubs on the Rue De Rivoli where she saw Stephan Grappeli, Sonny Rollins and Sidney Bechet. She went out every night for a month.

But she wanted to learn another language and in 1962 she headed to London. A couple of years later she met my father, John, and in 1966 they were married.

There was still a well of resentment in Britain in the 60s. She was shouted at in the street. My father’s Jewish agent initially wanted nothing to do with her, although they later became close friends.

In 67 Enoch Powell delivered his ‘rivers of blood’ speech and my father fearing what could happen if a rising swell of nationalism took hold, suggested my mother apply for a British passport.

They told her she needed to renounce German citizenship and pledge allegiance to the Queen. My parents filled out the forms but as she stood in line with the papers in her hand her stomach sank and she realised she could not go through with it.

It felt like a betrayal of her family and her identity. And appeasement of a new facism.

But she remained and John and Felizitas, or Fee (as she now called herself) built a life together and had four children, Jessica, Hannah, a handsome son, Max and another boy, Ben.

And she returned to her study of language, becoming a professor of linguistics and 18th century French literature. She has written several books. To this day she speaks three languages every day. Her friends span Europe and she has recently started studying Spanish.

This is my mother today. She is still beautiful but in her 81st year struggling with Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s.

By March 30th despite having lived here for more than 60 years, worked and raised 4 children she will be required by law to make an application for settled status or risk being deported.

Much has been said about how brexit is the betrayal of the young by the old. I cannot help feeling that it is also a betrayal of her and so many others of her generation. They inherited a Europe that was ravaged and deeply divided. And they built something beautiful in its place.