Calamity?

About 12 years ago I was at the Holocaust museum with my younger brother and mother. I was all of 18 and already a "veteran" Holocaust scholar.

I had spent the previous summer in Berlin, Poland and Czech Republic with a youth exchange group of Germans and Israelis - an intense summer of touring major Holocaust landmarks.

With us was a living witness who's story we had followed.

Coming into the museum I knew nothing would touch me - I was already immune to the horror. I could not have for seen my mum's reaction. If memory serves me she fainted and my brother and I had to carry her to one of the benches outside. That day she had a major migraine and my brother followed suite.I couldn't really get it. My youthful arrogance clouded me.

Today 12 years later I walk around this museum again. I never asked my mum what went through her mind today I think I know...

Probably the fear of it, the thought that she a born catholic might have doomed me and my brother to some calamity, by marrying a Jew and raising us in Israel - was too much for her to handle... maybe I'm reading too much in to it or maybe I should just ask her.