Thursday, August 4, 2011
THEN
On August 4, 1944, Anne Frank and her family are arrested from their hiding place in Amsterdam by Nazi soldiers. As the persecution of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family goes into hiding in the annex of hidden Anne’s father’s office building. After two years, the family is betrayed and transported to different concentration camps. From June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944, Anne chronicles her life by writing in her diary. “When I write, I can shake off all my cares,” she writes. Anne is often restless as her only connection to the outside world was a chestnut tree. The last time she writes about the tree was right before her arrest. “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.” Her father, Otto Frank, the only survivor in the family, later comments: “How could I have known how much it meant to Anne to see a patch of blue sky, to observe the seagulls as they flew, and how important the chestnut tree was for her.” At the age of 15, Anne and her sister Margot die of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945—a few weeks before the country was liberated by the Allies.
NOW
Today, Anne’s chestnut tree is the subject of a custody battle. During a violent storm on August 23, 2010, the tree fell down even though an iron structure had been built to support it—as it was rife with a fungal infection. Before the tree fell, the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation had posted a statement on its website that the English tree expert, Neville Fay, had said, “This tree may yet survive us all!” Many people, along with 31 institutions, schools, and museums would like to secure the tree’s remains. For them, it is a symbol of solidarity with Anne, a resistor of the oppressive and anti-Semitic Nazis. According to the foundation’s website, the contractor who built the iron structure has seized the remains, taking them to his construction site, refusing to distribute them.
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