Anne Frank Tree
(June 8th, 2011)
There were several strong gusts of wind and one of these knocked over the tree,” Hans Westra, the director of Anne Frank House, told press agency AFP.
The tree, which was diseased and supported by a steel frame, was 20 metres (65 feet) tall and between 160 to 180 years old, Westra said.
“Luckily, nobody was injured,” said Westra, adding that the collapse had not damaged the house where Anne Frank and her family had lived in an annexe during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands until their discovery in 1944.
Anne Frank died in 1945 at the age of 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany.
She wrote in her diary on February 23, 1944: “The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air.”
“We were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.”
The diseased tree had been due to be cut down in 2008 because experts said its mould-infested trunk could snap at any moment, but local residents and tree experts intervened to save it, raising funds for a steel frame.
“When we learned that the tree was diseased, in 2005, saplings were taken and grown to make young trees. Around 100 of them have been offered around the world to be planted,” said Westra.
“One of them is in the Anne Frank garden in Paris, and another was sent to the White House,” he said.
In 2009, 150 saplings were set aside for planting in a wood in the Dutch city.
Anne Frank’s memoir, published in English as The Diary of a Young Girl, is one of the most widely read books in the world. It was found by a family friend after the end of the war.
Anne Frank Tree in USA
Anne Frank Tree at WTC, dedicated on 70th Anniversery of Anne Frank’s Diary Publication
A moving ceremony at World Trade Center to mark the 70th Anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank’s Diary which included the dedication of a white chestnut tree, a clone grown from an original tree outside the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family in Amsterdam, 188 Keizersgracht. Anne wrote about her view from the annex window: “As long as this exists, how can I be sad?” and referred to the chestnut three three times in her diary. This tree in Liberty Park is the eleventh clone of the tree in the United States planted by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. The date, June 12th, also marks what would have been Anne’s 88th birthday, sharing a birth year with Martin Luther King. Jr and Audrey Hepburn.
