Anne Frank's chestnut tree is to be cut down next week - it had been granted a reprieve until January but it has been decided that it has to go a lot sooner.It has now become so diseased that it is likely to topple over damaging the surrounding houses.
The tree was lovingly described by Anne Frank in the diary that she kept whilst hiding from the Nazi German occupation in World War II.
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"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on 23 February 1944.
"From my favourite 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, ... and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies - while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."
Officials in Amsterdam confirmed this week that the tree would now have to go sooner rather than later.
"Initially the tree had been granted a reprieve until January but a new report last week showed that only 28 percent of the wood in the trunk was healthy," said Ton Boon from the district council in Amsterdam.
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"It is irresponsible to leave it standing. The report shows the tree doesn't even need a storm to snap in two," he explained.
Although a licence to fell the diseased tree has already been granted, the Amsterdam municipality announced in October it had given opponents of the move until January to come up with a rescue plan.
But the new report is so worrying that the municipality decided to go ahead and fell the tree next Wednesday.
The huge horse chestnut, estimated to be more than 150 years old, has been in bad condition for years.
"It is a miracle that it is still standing. We are really worried it could just snap in two," Boon said.
The current owner of the tree wants it cut down because he is liable under Dutch law for any damage done if it is blown down.
Many people had lobbied to try to save the tree because of its history.
Replacement
The authorities are planning to put a graft of the old horse chestnut, which will be 100 percent genetically similar, in exactly the same spot.
The tree is in the garden of a canal house on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht that is overlooked by the annex the Jewish Frank family hid in until they were finally betrayed, arrested by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps.
Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Second World War, Secret Annex, Trees, World War II