Anne Frank Tree

When I was over in the Netherlands I caught wind of this big controversy about whether or not to cut down this big tree near the Anne Frank house that's mentioned in her diaries but that's become a threat to the structure. In a small country without a lot of really big social problems, public controversy seemed to consist of fighting about immigration and then fighting about the tree. But now the spirit of compromise has prevailed with regard to the tree: "city authorities, residents, the Anne Frank museum and conservationists said they had agreed to build a frame around the 150-year-old tree before the end of May."

Immigration, though, I imagine will stay controversial.

Comments

Holland is a great country. Did you get a chance to go to Rotterdam or The Hague when you were there? Great cheese, great looking people, rich tradition, tulips...fun place.

Posted by Steady | January 23, 2008 9:02 AM

I'm a huge Anne Frank fan, but if the tree is diseased, is it the best idea to prop it up?

The fact that the tree may be held up for 5 to 15 years seems like a way of punting the issue to me.

Surely if Miss Frank had survived the Holocaust, she would have understood that even with the best of intentions, change goes on and all things must come to their natural end.....

Posted by JRVJ | January 23, 2008 9:21 AM

In a small country without a lot of really big social problems, public controversy seemed to consist of fighting about immigration and then fighting about the tree.

As opposed to ours, where we spend our time worrying about Terri Schiavo, Elian Gonzalez, and the placement of the ten commandments near courthouses.

Posted by right | January 23, 2008 9:52 AM

It wasn't really a big controversy- a couple of groups objected to tearing it down, it got a lot of foreign press (more than in the Dutch newspapers, actually) and they came up with a workable compromise after a few weeks. I only remember it being mentioned once, briefly, on the TV news. Immigration, on the other hand.....:)

Posted by Kevin | January 23, 2008 10:03 AM

We're still trafficking in relics, 600 years after the Middle Ages withered away.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 23, 2008 10:35 AM

Anne Frank trivia: Audrey Hepburn lived through WWII and was involved in the resistance via her parents (though her birth father was a Nazi). She seldom talked about her experiences until late in life.

Wiki: "I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank. We were both ten when war broke out and fifteen when the war finished. I was given the book in Dutch, in galley form, in 1946 by a friend. I read it – and it destroyed me. It does this to many people when they first read it but I was not reading it as a book, as printed pages. This was my life. I didn't know what I was going to read. I've never been the same again, it affected me so deeply."

"We saw reprisals. We saw young men put against the wall and shot and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again. If you read the diary, I've marked one place where she says 'five hostages shot today'. That was the day my uncle was shot. And in this child's words I was reading about what was inside me and is still there. It was a catharsis for me. This child who was locked up in four walls had written a full report of everything I'd experienced and felt."

More WWII actress trivia: Hedy Lamarr of "Solomon and Sheba" was married young to a Viennese military contractor and met Hitler and Mussolini socially many times. Along with the avant-garde composer George Antheil she got a patent on the spread-spectrum technology used today, though the patent expired before the patent became usable. She and Antheil were posthumously recognized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Link

.

Posted by John Emerson | January 23, 2008 11:01 AM

Speaking of the Dutch, I highly recommend reading "Infidel" by Aayan Hirsi Ali. It highlights how deeply immigration will continue to divide the Netherlands and other European countries with no resolution in sight. She also reminds you that freedom is something not yet highly valued in many places around the world to our great peril.

Posted by Michael W | January 23, 2008 3:43 PM