A shoot growing from the splintered trunk of a chestnut that cheered Anne Frank during her time in hiding could give the tree a new lease of life after a storm toppled it, said a spokeswoman for a group that campaigned to save the tree.
A storm that battered Amsterdam on Aug. 23 snapped the towering chestnut and sent it crashing to the ground in a garden behind Anne’s secret wartime hideaway.
Helga Fassbinder of the Support Anne Frank Tree foundation said Aug. 24 that the remains of the trunk will be left in the ground so that a shoot growing out of healthy wood on one side can grow.
She said using an existing shoot on the trunk should provide a swift replacement for the chestnut.
“It grows faster than normal because it benefits from the enormous root system,” she said. The owner of the private garden where the tree stood agrees with the plan.
Fassbinder said large chunks of wood from the tree, estimated to weigh 60,000 pounds, will be lifted out of the garden by crane and saved. Smaller branches and leaves will be chipped.
A global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as the Anne Frank Tree, was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court.
The 150-year-old tree suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half its trunk to rot.
In a bid to prolong its life, municipal workers buttressed the tree’s trunk in a steel cage two years ago, but it was not enough to save it from a strong gust in the Aug. 23 storm.
Many clones of the tree had already been grown, including 11 in the process of being planted at sites around the U.S. and dozens more around Europe, including 150 at a single park in Amsterdam. One sapling, which arrived in California in January, will be planted in the Holocaust Memorial Grove at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park after a two-year quarantine period.
Anne Frank made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until her 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 … and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies — while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.”