A group that battled to save the Anne Frank tree from being cut down only to see it toppled by a storm says they hope a shoot growing from the chestnut's splintered trunk will give the historic tree a new lease of life.
The tree that comforted Anne while she was hiding from Nazi occupiers in World War II snapped and crashed to the ground Monday in a garden behind her family’s secret hideaway.
Helga Fassbinder of the Support Anne Frank Tree foundation said Tuesday the remains of the trunk will be left in the ground so that a shoot growing out of one side can grow.
Fassbinder says large chunks of wood from the tree, estimated to weigh 60,000 pounds (27 metric tons), will be lifted out of the garden by crane and saved. Smaller branches and leaves will be chipped.
Anne Frank (1929-1945) – thirteen-year-old Jewish schoolgirl was given diary as a birthday present just two weeks before her family were forced into hiding in a concealed annexe of her father’s spice warehouse in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
The account she recorded in it of the two years they spent there in cramped, increasingly difficult conditions was to become perhaps the most famous document of the Second World War.
People all over the world are able to see what life as a persecuted Jew was like during World War II; thus gaining an appreciation for the sacrifices people made in the struggle to stay alive.
