Heart-Wrenching End to the 'Anne Frank Tree'

The famous chestnut tree which used to cheer up Anne Frank while she and her family hid from the Nazis, was toppled by the wind and heavy rain that swept Amsterdam on Monday.

Anne mentioned the tree several times in the diary she famously kept during the 25 months in which she and her family were in hiding. The once monumental tree, now diseased and rotten to the core, snapped at about one metre above the ground and crashed across several gardens.

The tree's collapse damaged a brick wall and several sheds, but luckily nobody was hurt, plus no damage was incurred by the nearby buildings, including the Anne Frank House museum. "No one was injured,” said museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart. "Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down.”

In 2007, a global campaign dedicated to save the tree, also known as "The Anne Frank Tree,” was launched after Amsterdam's city officials claimed it is a safety hazard and ordered it to be felled. The tree was then granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court. The 150-year-old chestnut suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half of its trunk to rot. Some two years ago, in a special effort to save the tree, city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system, which was supposed to prevent it from falling, but unfortunately, it didn't help.

The Netherlands' Trees Institute, one of the most consistent supporters of the preservation project, said it was "unpleasantly surprised" by the news of the tree's fall early Monday afternoon. "On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades with the support structure,” the institute said in a statement. The institute said it didn't know why the support structure had failed.

Moreover, many clones of the tree have been grown, including 11 planted at sites around the United States and 10 at a park in Amsterdam. Right now, it is not clear whether a new tree will replace the original one on the same spot, since it rests on property belonging to a neighbour.

Young Anne Frank made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept until her family was arrested in August of 1944. "Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs,” she wrote on February 23, 1944."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.”

Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (northwest Germany) in March, 1945. Her diary was recovered and published after her death. It has been translated into many languages and has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust serving as the basis for several plays and films.