Ann Frank tree to be cut down

[The Aviator]

Wednesday Nov 14 10:15 AEDT
A diseased chestnut tree that gave solace to Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam will be cut down on Nov. 21, the city council said on Tuesday.
Plans to fell the tree had been delayed by appeals but a recent investigation had shown the tree was too diseased.
"The risk that the trunk will break causing the 27-ton tree to fall ... is unacceptably big," the council said in a statement on its website.
Only 28 percent of the trunk was still healthy, it said.



The Jewish teenager described gazing longingly at the tree in the diary she kept during her two years in hiding.
Anne and her family hid in an annexe to a canal-side warehouse until they were betrayed and arrested in August 1944. The towering horse chestnut was one of the few examples of nature and normal life she could see.
The council said that once cut down, the tree would be lifted out by crane.
"After the felling, a graft from the original tree will be put in its place. In this way the tree, which is so closely connected with the memory of Anne Frank, will live on," the Anne Frank House said on its website.
The Frankfurt-born girl's diary became one of the world's most widely read books after publication in 1947.
Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, just weeks before it was liberated.

[debra]

Oh, God........I hope they are still able to display what they can of it, somehow. My husband flies to Amsterdamn on November 17th; I'll have him check it out. If you need pictures or anything let me know but the 16th of November either in this post or by private email. Thanks, Deb

[Lucy Stag]

Aw, that's such a shame. Some history just will not be preserved.

[WHITLEYMAN]

As an arborist by profession,I wish I was there.(fixing sick trees is what I do).As it is being replaced by a clone, I hope the local horties were forward thinking enough that the cutting was struck some time ago so it will be at least moderately advanced at planting.I would assume many cuttings of this very significant tree have been taken.(perhaps one of our northern hemisphere members could look into this before the tree is thrown into a chipper and the genetic material lost forever).