Activists battle to save Anne Frank tree in the Netherlands

Conservationists are fighting a last-ditch effort to prevent a badly-diseased chestnut tree mentioned in Anne Frank’s diary being cut down.

Hiding from the Nazis in a cramped Amsterdam apartment, Anne often gazed at the tree through an attic skylight – her only window to the outside world – and dreamed of freedom.

Now a group of activists are trying to save it, saying the tree is a living link to the memory of the teenage diarist, who died in a concentration camp aged 15.

Sylvio Mutal, a neighbour whose study overlooks the courtyard where the tree is located, said: “It’s a monument to the spirit of what Anne Frank wrote, hope and light, which she did not have.”

Mr Mutal, a former consultant to the UN on preservation of monuments, called a decision by the city of Amsterdam to fell the tree next week a “betrayal”, after earlier promises to wait until January 1 to consider a salvage plan.

“I’m not doubting the tree is sick and may have to be cut off (down),” he said. “What I’m saying is I want a second opinion.”

The tree suffers from a fungus that has caused more than half its trunk to rot. The city gave the order on Tuesday to have it cut down next Wednesday, citing an appraisal that said it was in acute danger of falling down.

But opponents, including the Netherlands’ Trees Institute, challenged that decision as over-hasty, and argued the tree is a living historical monument worthy of extraordinary measures to save it.

The Utrecht-based institute carried out an independent investigation of the tree yesterday and said it will file for an injunction to block the felling order.

Its investigation found that while much of the tree’s trunk is sick, what remains healthy is strong enough to hold during a storm and the main supporting roots are healthy.

Institute arborist Annemiek van Loon said: “This tree is of very great cultural and historical value, and ecological value.

“You can’t just replace a 160-year-old tree.”

A rescue plan would probably involve supports for the tree’s trunk and limbs.

The tree stands behind the “secret annexe” at the top of the canal-side warehouse where the Frank family hid during Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War.

The Jewish teenager kept her diary while she remained indoors for 25 months until the family was arrested in August 1944.

Her diary was preserved and later published and has now been read by millions of people.

Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.

She wrote on February 23 1944: “Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs.

“From my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind...

“As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.”

City spokesman Ton Boon it would be “irresponsible to let the tree stand” after the most recent study.

“We’ve taken a lot of effort ourselves to preserve this tree,” he said.

“We would have liked to have waited (for the salvage plan). But at a certain moment, reality comes knocking.”

The Anne Frank Museum, where the tiny apartment has been preserved, has previously distanced itself from the dispute over the tree, but now backs the city’s stance.

It has already taken grafts and plans to replace the tree with a sapling from the original chestnut.