On February 23, 1944, Anne Frank wrote about her beloved chestnut tree, which she could glimpse from her hiding place:
From my favorite spot on the floor Ilook up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the sea gulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.
Trapped by the extremes of adolescence and the unrelenting hand of evil, she affirmed that people were essentially good at heart, fantasized about being a great writer one day, and hung her hopes on a spreading chestnut tree.
The raven-haired author died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March of 1945.
On August 23, 2010, a storm uprooted Annes 150-year-old chestnut tree, already well ravaged by disease.
The story could have ended there. Death by natural causes. But it really portends a beginning. Like Annes words, the tree sprouted a message of hope and life. Through a project administered by the Anne Frank Center USA, chestnuts were collected from the dying tree so they could take root in 11 locations across the US.
Unfortunately, the saplings that arrived in this country last December were put under quarantine by the US Dept. of Agriculture. A disease is killing horse chestnuts throughout Europe. The government will hold the saplings for three years. But then off to life. Not to mention, the day after the tree died a new sprout was seen pushing up from the roots.
Like so many fathers, Otto Frank did not come to know his daughter until he read her diary.
How could Ihave suspected that it meant so much to Anne to see a patch of blue sky, to observe the gulls during their flight and how important the chestnut tree was to her, as I recall that she never took an interest in nature? he wondered in a 1968 speech. But she longed for it during that time when she felt like a caged bird.
Some people call Anne Frank a naive idealist. How could anyone living through the Holocaust assert that people were really good at heart? Surely her last days in Bergen-Belsen murdered her idealism. She thought her family was dead. She watched her sister Margot die. In the end, totally alone, Anne succumbed to unspeakable horror, and we cannot say what she really thought then.
But we are privy to the thoughts she penned in her diary. Perhaps it is best that way, for us and for her. Anne probably would want us to believe that human beings are good at heart, that chestnut trees can survive the cruelest storms of time. It may not be a plausible concept, especially in the dark light of the Holocaust. But it certainly makes life more bearable and waters the seeds of future generations, which cannot take root in arid soil, devoid of hope.
And there is that new sprout, pushing up from the roots . . .
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
