Amsterdam Explorer

To find a war, tragedy or disaster funny, some say all you have to do is wait a while. When enough years have passed the victims cease to be humans, and instead become history. The measure of a great museum is that it proves that wrong, and the small children’s wing of the Nazi Resistance Museum in Amsterdam couldn't have done it better.

The entrance was hidden away, as if it were itself a shy child trying to abscond to its own secret corner. As I pushed open the door, the first thing I noticed was the vast silver birch tree at the centre of the space, like a guardian watching over the four little playhouses spread out under its embrace. Each house, I soon realised, was linked to a different character, whose life-size cardboard cut out greeted us by their front doors. Eva, a pen poised in her hand, a smile on her face, sent a concentration camp. Jun, playing soldiers, whose Father openly defies the Nazis. Henk, too young for long trousers, living where the bombs drop. Nelly, wiping her hands on her apron, who’s so very proud of Hitler and the “good guys”. Each one crafted to demonstrate to the children who explore this place today, what the choices were for the young people of occupied Amsterdam.

Throughout the exhibition the attention to detail was breathtaking; even the seats were references to their lives (suitcases for Eva packed up for the camps, tree stumps for Jun hiding Jews in the forest). These makeshift chairs were clearly too small for my adult frame, but I sat anyway, pulled into the magical atmosphere. When I ducked into the children’s houses, they too were slightly too small. It felt like a house from a child’s memories, transporting me viscerally into their lives, making my chest ache for the children of Amsterdam.

It wasn’t until I left this evocative fairytale grotto, and found myself in a new, much smaller room, that I realised what I had just been looking at. On the far wall of this stark white space, were four photographs. Four pairs of wrinkled eyes locked onto mine, and the names beneath them made my chest swell and clench. Nelly, Jan, Eva, Henk. Inside those four little houses, with their little tables, and their little stools, I’d thought it was all pretend. I’d made them examples from a primary school History textbook, but here they were, in front of me, and so real.

Everyone should have that moment, of being so effected by the past that you feel it in your skin, and no one could help experience it here.