Anne Frank Tree - Anne Frank

Anne Frank

The tree is mentioned three times in Anne Frank's diary The Diary of a Young Girl. On 23 February 1944, she writes about the tree:

Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite 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. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.

Otto Frank, Anne's father, described his thoughts upon reading the diary for the first time in a 1968 speech. He described his surprise at learning of the tree's importance to Anne as follows:

How could I have 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. But she longed for it during that time when she felt like a caged bird. She only found consolation in thinking about nature. But she had kept such feelings completely to herself.

Read more about this topic:  Anne Frank Tree

Famous quotes containing the words anne frank, anne and/or frank:

    Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.
    Anne Frank (1929–1945)

    If necessity is the mother of invention, then resourcefulness is the father.
    Beulah Louise Henry, U.S. inventor. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 13, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)

    I couldn’t find the spot where Frank had hidden the bag with the clothes. You can’t imagine how cold I was until I found them. You know, I’m beginning to understand why ghosts moan so in this sort of weather.
    Lester Cole (1904–1985)