Anne Frank tree to be planted on US Capitol lawn

Ceremony planned for April 30, Congressional leaders announce Tuesday

By AFP 9 April 2014, 12:30 am

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WASHINGTON — A sapling grown from the tree that Holocaust victim Anne Frank wrote about while in hiding will be planted this month on the US Capitol grounds, congressional leaders announced Tuesday.

“The Anne Frank memorial tree is an offspring of the horse chestnut tree that was featured in Anne’s diary writings,” House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote in a letter to members of Congress.

The tree “grew outside of the Amsterdam building where she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II,” they explained.

The planting on the Capitol’s west front lawn will occur during a ceremony April 30.

The young tree is among several saplings created from the original tree, which collapsed outside the Amsterdam annex in 2010.

Anne, with piles of her translated Diaries in the reflection, gift shop of Anne Frank House. (photo credit: Matt Lebovic)

Frank wrote her observations from June 1942 to August 1944, while the Jewish girl and her family remained in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands.

She was captured August 4, 1944, and she died seven months later at age 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Her diary was rescued by a family friend, and through the help of Anne’s father Otto Frank was published and eventually translated into more than 60 languages, including in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.”