ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE GETS REPRIEVE

Anne Frank's Ailing Tree Gets a Reprieve (SFGate)
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The diseased chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II has been granted a reprieve. The 150-year-old tree was due to be chopped down after experts determined it could not be rescued from the fungus and moths that caused more than half its trunk to rot.

The tree is familiar to millions of readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands behind the "secret annex" atop the canal-side warehouse where her family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and its crown was just visible through the attic skylight — the only window that was not blacked out.

An appeals panel made two separate decisions last week: one upholding the right of the tree's owner to have it cut down any time in the next two years, and another granting a request by the country's Trees Institute to investigate the possibility of saving it, said Ton Boon, a spokesman for Amsterdam's Central borough.

The tree is on the property of Keizersgracht 188, adjacent to the building that is now the Anne Frank Museum. Property owner Henric Pomes has agreed for the time being to wait for the institute's proposal, due before Jan. 1, Boon said.

The Utrecht-based Trees Institute said its salvage plan would likely involve a combination of treatments and supports for its trunk and limbs.

SEE EARLIER: ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE FACES AX

ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE FACES AX

Anne Frank's chestnut tree faces ax (CNN)
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Amsterdam's city council gave the owner of the chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding a license to cut it down. Opponents have six weeks to file an objection but that is seen as unlikely. The large, 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling down.

The tree is familiar to some 25 million readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands in the courtyard of the "secret annex," the canal-side warehouse where her family hid during the Nazi occupation.

The Jewish teenager made several references to it in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until the family was arrested in August 1944.

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite 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."

The city council ruled in November that it was a hazard. On Thursday, the council granted the owner of the tree, the house next door to the former warehouse, a license to cut it down. No date has been set.

The Anne Frank Museum, where the tiny apartment has been preserved, said grafts already have been taken and a sapling from the original chestnut will eventually replace it.

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