Anne Frank’s chestnut tree is dead.
On 23 February, 18 April and 13 May 1944 she wrote in her diary about the tree in the garden of The Annexe, which she could see from the window. “Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, 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.” (23/2/1944)
In 1968 Anne’s father, Otto Frank, said this about it:“How could I have suspected that it meant so much to Anne to see a patch of blue sky, to observe the gulls during their flight and how important the chestnut tree was to her, as I recall that she never took an interest in nature. But she longed for it during that time when she felt like a caged bird. She only found consolation in thinking about nature. But she had kept such feelings completely to herself.”
Symbol of persecution
What if Anne had described not a tree but a cat, a Dutch columnist wondered. But the tree became a story and the story became bigger than the tree. The tree became a symbol of the persecution of the Jews.
That became obvious in 2006 when the authorities wanted to chop it down because it was affected by fungus. People from the neighbourhood put up resistance. The judge agreed with them. The tree was propped up and six cuttings ended up at a nurseryman’s in Groningen.
Broken by storm
At half past one on Monday 23 August, the chestnut tree snapped in a summer storm. The thirty ton tree that was more than a century and a half old broke off about a metre above the ground, bringing to an end the discussion about whether the diseased tree should go or not.
Since then branches have been offered for sale on the internet.
When Todd Byers from Seattle heard the news, as he came out of the Anne Frank House on Monday, his laconic reaction was: “Not a single tree will live for ever. Fortunately, it’s been cloned.”
What is it that makes us think of this verse by M. Vasalis?
For a tree in the Vondel Park
A tree was cut down with long locks of green.
It sighed with a swish like a child
as it fell, still full of summer wind.
I have seen the wagon that carried it away.
O, as a young man, as Hector in his chariot
with trailing hair and the smell of youth
streaming out of his beautiful wounds,
the young head still unscathed,
The proud buttocks still undefeated.
(translated by Cliff Crego)
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