I would imagine that you saw this item in today’s Chicago Sun-Times, but in case you didn’t, I thought I would pass it along.
Anne Frank’s beloved tree to be cut down

November 15, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland must be cut down, the Amsterdam city council said Tuesday.
The tree in the courtyard behind the canal-side warehouse where the Frank family took refuge for more than two years has been attacked by an aggressive fungus and a moth, called the horse chestnut leaf miner. Experts estimate the tree’s age at 150-170 years.

The chestnut is familiar to some 25 million readers of The Diary of Anne Frank. Frank looked at it longingly from the attic, the only window that was not blacked out to prevent anyone seeing movement inside the apartment in the rear of the warehouse on Prinsengracht street, where the family hid.

The Jewish teenager made several references to it in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until the family was arrested in August 1944.

Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.

I guess it just adds to the idea of people remembering her time gazing out the window at freedom.

Larry Kucharik