Fate of Anne Frank tree hangs in balance

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An Amsterdam official called on Tuesday for a delay to the felling of a chestnut tree that Anne Frank could see as she hid from the Nazis.

A court was due to rule later on Tuesday on a move by conservationists to stop the felling of the 150-year-old tree, ordered for Wednesday because of fears it could fall as a fungal disease has spread through most of the trunk.

Marijke Vos, city environment councillor, asked the district responsible to delay cutting the tree down after Amsterdam was swamped with messages of protest from around the world.

"It seems there is no acute danger for the surroundings so we can take more time," her spokeswoman said.

The tree stands in a walled courtyard behind the canalside warehouse where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis until 1944. The young girl often gazed at the tree from the stuffy secret annex, mentioning it several times in her diary.

"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote, three months before being betrayed and arrested in August 1944.

The district council said on Monday its latest tests showed that only 24 percent of the tree was still healthy, supporting its view that a speedy felling was unavoidable.

But the Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, said independent stability tests indicated the 27-tonne chestnut was still safe and authorities should consider ways to save it.

The Frankfurt-born Jewish teenager Anne Frank spent two years in hiding in the annex above her father's warehouse, concealed with seven others behind a movable bookcase.

Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just a few weeks before it was liberated. Her diary became one of the world's most widely read books after publication in 1947.

When the chestnut tree's future became threatened in 2006, the Anne Frank museum set up a website where visitors leave messages on virtual chestnut leaves: (www.annefranktree.com)

Amsterdam resident Charles Kuijpers, 34, has put up for sale on eBay a chestnut he says came from the tree. Bids for the chestnut have reached over $10,000 (4,845 pounds) in the auction, which is titled "Grow your own Anne Frank tree with a chestnut".