For my generation, The Diary of Anne Frank was essential reading by the time we reached the age of 12 or 14.
And so the rise of Pim Fortuyn, the violence surrounding his election campaign, and the polls showing that most of his support came from voters in the 18-35 age group must have surprised an older generation weaned on images of a tolerant and pluralist Dutch society which had taken to heart the story of Anne Frank and the harsh lessons of the second World War.
Recently, the Anne Frank House, by the banks of the canal in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam, has been refurbished. Once again, the queues snake back through the sidestreets behind the Westerkerk, where Rembrandt was buried. If the lessons and horrors of the Holocaust have been lost on a new generation of Dutch voters, they retain the respectful attention of visitors and tourists.
And the Anne Frank House has special significance and symbolism this month, as it is 60 years since she received her first diary as a present for her 13th birthday on June 12th, 1942. Two days later, on June 14th, she started writing her letters to her imaginary friend, "Dear Kitty", the first entries in a book that has since been published in 55 languages, sold more than 20 million copies, and inspired so many school plays.
There is an irony in the fact that Pim Fortuyn and his supporters campaigned to end immigration in the Netherlands, for Anne Frank and her parents were German refugees who had settled in Amsterdam after the rise of the Nazis.
For centuries, Dutch society had a reputation among Jews throughout Europe as the very model of tolerance and pluralism. The 16th-century Dutch revolutionaries realised that their liberties and their new religious freedoms could only be guaranteed if they extended tolerance to the Catholic minority in the new Dutch United Provinces. Almost by accident, the Jews benefited too, and Amsterdam became a safe refuge for Jews escaping persecution throughout the rest of Europe.
Although there was no formal ghetto in Amsterdam, by the mid-17th century the majority of Jews in the city were living in the area now known as Waterlooplein. Known as the Jodenhoek or "Jews' Corner", it soon acquired a bohemian atmosphere. At the height of his fame, Rembrandt bought a house on Jodenbreestraat, the "Broad Street of the Jews".
There he spent the best 20 years of his life, frequently painting his Jewish neighbours.
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929, but her family moved to the safe haven of Amsterdam in 1933, and Otto Frank became involved in making jellies and jams and also worked in the spice trade. The family business was located in the front of the canal-side house, with warehouses on the ground floor and offices and storerooms above.
Amsterdam continued to be a safe haven for the Frank family and other Jewish refugees until Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Soon the Jews of Amsterdam were rounded up in the Jewish Theatre and in Waterlooplein in front of the aptly named Moses and Aaron Church in the old Jewish Quarter. It is estimated that the Jewish population of Amsterdam stood at 120,00 in the 1930s; when the city was liberated, only 5,000 Jews were left and the Jodenhoek had become a ghost town.
On July 6, 1942, weeks after Anne Frank began writing in her diary, Otto and Edith Frank decided to move upstairs into an annex at the back of the warehouse with Anne and her sister, Margot. A week later, they were joined by the van Pel family and, in November, Fritz Pfeffer found space in the hiding-place too.
The secret rooms at the top of he house could not be seen from the canal-front, and the entrance was hidden behind a bookcase. The workers below had little idea of the eight people hiding and living in fear above them. Anne brightened up her dour room with the postcards, magazine clippings and photographs of film stars that can still be seen on the walls.
Anne's diary recounts the growth and hopes of a teenager who was bubbly, lively and ambitious despite her strained living conditions. Each day she could hear the bells of Rembrandt's Westerkerk nearby, and the diaries describe graphically the deterioration in living conditions as food became scarce and stale and water supplies threatened to dry up.
"You wouldn't believe how much kale can stink when it's a few years old!" she wrote on March 14th, 1944.
Despite the hardships and deprivations, hope began to dawn in 1944 - the Allies were winning and the liberation of the Netherlands appeared to be close. But on August 4th, 1944 the Frank family and their companions in hiding were betrayed to the Gestapo by an unknown Dutch collaborator. Anne and her sister died of typhus within a short time of each other in Bergen-Belsen, just one week before the German surrender. Otto Frank, who had been deported to Auschwitz, was the only member of the family to survive.
A STONE memorial near Waterlooplein remembers the dead of the Dutch Jewish Resistance. An inscription quotes the prophet Jeremiah: "If my eyes were a well of tears, I would cry day and night for the fallen fighters of my beloved people".
Climbing back down from Anne Frank's hiding-place to the rooms used for exhibitions, including displays on the rise of the far right in Europe, my eyes felt like a well of tears as I realised that when Anne Frank began her diaries she was the same age as I was when I first read them and the same age as my children are now.
Little did Anne Frank know that she was going to become a symbol of resistance to racism or that she would become a best-selling author. But she had confided to her diary: "I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people. And therefore I am so grateful to God for giving me this gift of writing, of expressing all that is in me!"
And later she wrote: "You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist and, later, a famous writer."
For more information about the Anne Frank House, visit www.annefrank.nl