Anne Frank‘s House, Amsterdam, 18.08.2014

Anne Frank, a child in common with the children from the Bullenhuser Damm.

We queue for two hours. Constant, minute-long hold-ups that feel like forever.

Just before we get in, a downpour.

A second blow; a sign at the entrance reads "No photography!"

Visitors are deeply moved by this place and one should be considerate to their emotional state - hence the reason for the ban.

I decide to flee to the front and ask a staff member for help. He passes me on. The house is full, but I should try my luck demurely. However, only up to the bookshelf, behind which a hidden world opens up.

It works, but I‘m not altogether happy with the result.

I speak once more to the helpful assistant at the exit. The house will close at 10pm. We should come back twenty minutes beforehand. We eat at a restaurant opposite and return punctually on time.

The photographs work much better now that I‘m familiar with the layout of the space.

An attendant reels us in at the bookshelf. No more photographs. We keep to this.

My thoughts and feelings are difficult to frame in words:

My God! They were kids! Children with urges to exercise their limbs, condemned to keep still in order to avoid drawing attention to their hiding place. When you walk through these tiny rooms you can empathise with the penned up prisoners and the anguish they had to bear.

My God! Why Auschwitz? Liberation was a mere two months away!

My God! When you squeeze through the rooms you have an impression that, even after almost sixty years, Anne Frank lives!