The council's education department took the initiative to bring the event to Enfield.

Whenever Hans returns to Amsterdam and hears the chimes of the famous Western Tower clock, that Anne refers to in her diary, he thinks of her living just a few streets away.

He believes the Holocaust has a lesson for modern events whether in Bosnia or Africa.

Like Anne Frank he was a hidden child, in his case being given away by his parents at the age of 11 months to be brought up by the Dutch Resistance because his parents feared capture by the Nazis. He thought his foster mother was his real mother. After the war he was taken to see his real mother in hospital and she did not know him. "Later I found out that when she came hack from Auschwitz she was 25 years old, she weighed 38 pounds, she had no hair because they shaved her head and she suffered TB, typhoid and pleurisy.

"In my eyes she must have looked horrific," he said. Eventually he was returned to her although he rejected her and later became a rebellious child, When he was about 30 his mother told him the truth about his past. "She said that when I was born I was the eldest and her pride and joy.

"Mother suffered in various concentration camps and escaped the gas chambers on three occasions because she and a girlfriend crawled underneath the gas ovens and stayed there until everyone had gone.

"She said the only reason she survived was knowing I was alive and safe somewhere," he said.

Hans's mother is now 78 years old and lives in Los Angeles. His family moved to the USA where he joined the army and trained as a nurse.

He was then called up to fight in Vietnam, refused to go, moved to Holland where he married an English woman and then eventually to the UK.

Reading Anne Frank's diary, he says, you realise that even though cooped up in that attic she was alive, she saw the birds and trees, she was 'a picture of the universe' and that captured the imagination.

"I don't need sympathy, neither do the Jewish people. People need to be acutely aware of what it could possibly mean to live under a dictatorship.

"In remembering what happened to me 50 years ago, hopefully people will see things in a different light.

"The story of Anne Frank is a constant reminder that we must be united in being vigilant against any form of genocide or atrocities whether on grounds of colour, creed or religion.

"We can make sure it never happens again. People might say there is nothing we can do, others may say we can learn to live in harmony.