Anne Frank tree faces the chop
2006-11-15 15:10
Amsterdam - A giant chestnut tree which Anne Frank gazed upon from her attic hideaway is so diseased it must be felled, Amsterdam council said on Tuesday.
The chestnut stands in a garden backing on to the secret
annex where the Jewish teenager and her family hid from the
Nazis between 1942 and 1944.
Almost half of the 150- to 170-year-old tree, frequently
mentioned in Anne Frank's diary, has rotted, the council said.
Anne Frank began the diary before going into hiding in
German-occupied Netherlands and it was published in 1947 by her
father Otto Frank.
It has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into more than 60 languages.
Anne and her family were discovered in August 1944 in the annex of a canal-side warehouse and sent to concentration camps.
Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen camp
in 1945, just weeks before it was liberated.
- Reuters