Immortal saplings

"It is a symbol of hope and freedom, and with these saplings we can share that hope and freedom with the whole world,” said Amsterdam city councillor Marijke Vos just before planting the saplings in the Amsterdamse Bos park.

The sprouts are from among 150 donated by the Anne Frank House, which the museum says will help preserve Frank's memory.

Other saplings are to be planted in the park over the next few years. They were grown from chestnuts collected in 2005 from the white chestnut tree mentioned in Frank's diary.

The tree was Anne Frank's only link to nature. The Jewish teenager was able to see it while she was hidden up in a cramped, concealed attic in Amsterdam for more than two years during World War Two. She wrote about the tree three times in the diary that that she kept while she and her family were hiding from the Nazis and which became a worldwide best-seller.

"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote in May 1944, not long before her family was betrayed to the Nazis. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, aged just 15.

The chestnut tree itself is infected with fungus and at risk of falling over; it was set to be felled in 2007. Officials and conservationists however managed to secure it with a frame, which is expected to save the tree for a few more years. It will eventually be replaced with one of the saplings taken from it.

There have been similar plantings in cities such as Paris and Madrid. Vos said there are plans to plant a sapling near to Ground Zero in New York where nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center in September 11, 2001.

wl/AFP/Reuters

Editor: Kyle James