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Anne Frank's tree, hope lives on at Sonoma State University
Sam Youney, director of landscaping at Sonoma State University, examines the young chestnut sapling grown from a cutting from the original tree that inspired hope in Anne Frank.
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG/ PDPublished: Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:35 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:32 p.m.
It was the tree that infused Anne Frank with hope, offering a glimpse of the changing seasons and passage of time that she was unable to experience while her family lived hidden in German-occupied Amsterdam during World War II.
On Monday heavy winds and rain toppled the massive chestnut tree that the young teenager had admired through heavy curtains during the more than two years her family lived undetected by Nazi sympathizers.
But the tree, and its message of hope, will live on in Sonoma County, because one of the saplings taken from the original chestnut tree will be planted on the campus of Sonoma State University.
“It's sad, but there are many more trees from the mother tree. It's like children continuing legacies,” said Elaine Leeder, dean of the SSU School of Social Sciences.
The local sapling, about eight months into a three-year federally imposed quarantine, will eventually be planted at the Erna and Arthur Salm Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Grove on campus.
The sapling will be central in a mock planting ceremony Nov. 14 during which the public can see the approximately 14-inch tree.
“I'm saddened, but it's not unexpected,” Leeder said of the death of what is known as the Anne Frank Tree. “It's been dying and that is why the saplings were taken.”
The local tree is being housed away from other plant life and is at an undisclosed location because of threats made against it, said Sam Youney, director of landscaping at SSU.
Officials there are monitoring the tree to make sure it doesn't show signs of disease that crippled the original tree in recent years.
Officials in Amsterdam in 2007 had identified the Anne Frank chestnut for cutting down when it became weakened by disease. A public outcry led to stabilization efforts that proved futile Monday.
“We know that (the sapling) came from a tree that had major problems over its life, irregardless of whether it was taken care of,” Youney said.
The SSU is one of 11 sites in the U.S. where saplings have been placed through Anne Frank Center USA in New York. Other locations include the White House, Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., and the William J. Clinton Foundation.
“Anne Frank is a symbol of hope all around the world and in every culture. Everyone understands her message,” said Maureen McNeil, director of education at the Anne Frank Center.
The tree was a symbol of hope for Frank, McNeil said.
“Anne really looked out the window and saw the tree as a symbol of nature being in order,” she said.
In poignant and insightful prose, the teenager recorded her family's 25 months in hiding during the German occupation of Amsterdam, many times referencing the huge chestnut tree visible from her window.
“Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs,” she wrote in 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,” she wrote.
Her diary, found after her family's hiding place was discovered by the Nazis, has become the most widely read document of the holocaust.
Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. She was 15.
The camp was liberated by British troops six weeks later on April 15.
Planting the saplings in various spots around the world spreads a message, just as Frank's diary has done, Leeder said.
“There's a real sense of life continuing from his gorgeous tree that was 150 years old,” she said. “Holocaust survivors are dying too. It's the end of an era but it doesn't mean the importance of all this ends.”
“Sure, the tree is gone, but there are many more trees to pick up the symbolism of this.”
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Sonoma State University is home to one of those saplings and the tree will become part of school's Erna and Arthur Salm Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Grove on campus.
From her upper story window Frank looked to the tree for signs of life during her two-year incarceration.
“Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year,” Frank wrote in her famed diary in 1944.
Frank, who maintained a poignant diary throughout her family's two-year stay in hiding, died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
Her diary has become the most widely read document of the holocaust.
“Anne really looked out the window and saw the tree as a symbol of nature being in order,” said Maureen McNeil, director of education at the New York-based Anne Frank Center USA.
The saplings, under federal quarantine for two more years, will likely be the focus of renewed hope when they are planted, McNeil.
“I think it will be a huge celebration when these trees are planted and it's nice that they are spread out around the country,” she said.
- Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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