Anne Frank tree collapses.

From my favourite 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.

Anne's tree collapsed just yesterday, taken down by a windstorm.

Miep Gies, the primary and last of the guardians of the secret annex, passed away earlier this year at the age of 100. She was also the woman who preserved the diary for Anne's father. It would seem to be a sad year for Anne's legacy, though joy for the lives and longevities of a 150-year-old tree and the 100-year-old-helper is certainly the more appropriate, if less obvious, emotion. If not for the tree to comfort Anne, and the generous Dutch woman who preserved what was left of a life that would have otherwise been forgotten, our view of the Holocaust would be dramatically different. With so much humanity was destroyed, and so many of the traces that we usually leave behind gone with them, would we even see the events of the 40s in the same light without a humanizing face? Without Anne, the Holocaust is a horrifying statistic. With Anne, it's a reminder of the most inspiring and most beautiful aspects of humanity as well the very worst. And, here's the thing: none of this was all that long ago. Violence, genocide, racism, and even simple and ugly intolerance are on the march, as ever. The same ugly human impulses are lurking behind news stories from around the world, almost every day. While a tree is, ultimately, just a tree...not a young woman, nor a legacy, it still makes me a bit sad that there's one less reminder in the world of the consequences of intolerance. I try to be hopeful that, someday, we'll begin to value the rights of others to live as they choose, and that we'll come to respect peace and life over our endless desire for more stuff, but, as they say, it hasn't happened yet.

Today, the Anne Frank Foundation, in addition to maintaining the Anne Frank House and its educational collections, also oversees the Racism and Extremism Monitor organization. Anne's family home on Merweidplein has been renovated and is open each year to a writer for whom political oppression prohibits working in her or his home country.

Anne would have been 81 in June.

Comments

[Courtney]

Thanks Ross, wonderful tribute.

[Shannon]

I hadn't heard this. It makes me so sad. Like you say- it's like another piece of her story will be missing when the next generation reads it. And though the tree is just a tree - not the girl, or the story- it was STILL so much more than just a tree.

[Ross]

Well put. Last year, a couple of dozen saplings were handed out to organizations around the world. Hopefully they'll stand at least as long as Anne's tree.