Anne Frank's Tree

According to the Guardian (UK) the tree outside the house where Anne Frank and her family were hidden--a tree she mentions often in her famous diary--is in danger of being cut down. It is dying and in a position to damage the historic house should it, or any of its closest limbs, come down in a storm. Needless to say, cutting down the tree has proven to be a controversial issue, and if it comes down, it won't be without a fight.

Perhaps if I visited the tree and saw it with my own eyes, and imagined myself looking at it through the only available glass in the house that wasn't blocked up, I might feel differently about this. I remember how I felt when I visited the World War I battlegrounds in Belgium, and by seeing just how close the trenches had been to each other, better grasping the enormity of what happened there. But thinking about the matter from a distance, I can't help but feel that Anne's legacy is her book; that her book has become a greater symbol of hope than the tree will ever be. The tree can go, because the story lives on.