Anne Frank tree to live on

13:26 8th September 2010

When the 150-year-old horse chestnut that stood in the garden of the Amsterdam home of Anne Frank fell last month, many would have thought that the tree had met its end.

While this may be true of the original specimen, the Anne Frank Trust had the foresight to take grafts from the tree and pass one on to England's Batsford Foundation.

Garden and greenhouse experts at the Batsford Arboretum will now plant a sapling at the Gloucestershire site, ensuring that the historic plant lives on.

The original had succumbed to a combination of bleeding canker and horse chestnut leaf miner, which weakened it and caused it to snap during a force-ten storm last month.

It provided Anne Frank's only view during the two years she spent in hiding from the Nazi soldiers during World War II.

Her father Otto published the diary she kept during that time in memory of his daughter, who died alongside her mother, sister and countless others in Nazi concentration camps.

The book contained several references to the tree and its words helped people regain a sense of faith in humanity after the atrocities of the war.