Amsterdam tree made famous by Anne Frank must come down

Amsterdam - The white horse chestnut made famous by Anne Frank in her diary must be cut down for safety reasons, the city authorities said Tuesday. The authorities for Amsterdam-Centrum have applied for permission to cut down the 160-year-old tree that stands in the garden of 188 Keizersgracht. They pledged to grow a new tree from a cutting of the old. A recent inspection revealed the chestnut to be 42-per-cent rotten. A spokesman said the tree weighed 60 tons and stood 20 metres tall. It would cause a 'catastrophe' if it toppled. Frank, the Jewish girl whose diary of life in hiding from the Nazis during World War II has become a classic, mentions the tree three times during her entries from 1944. The tree, which she could see from the house where she was hiding on the Prinsengracht, comes up first on February 23, when Frank noted its bare branches, then in April, when she said that 'here and there you can already see a few small blossoms.' By May 13, a month before her 14th birthday, she was writing: 'Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.' Three months later, in August 1944, she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. She died there in March 1945, a little more than a month before the end of the war. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Amsterdam tree made famous by Anne Frank must come down

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