AMSTERDAM (AFP)---Work on a steel beam construction to save a diseased chestnut tree that Anne Frank mentioned in her diary as she hid in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is finished, the tree's supporters said Wednesday.
"The job is done," Dutch economist Arnold Heertje, a leading member of the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation, told journalists.
"This is not just any tree, it is linked with the history of the persecution of Jews in Amsterdam and Anne Frank. This tree was the only glimpse she got of the outside world," Heertje said.
He spoke in a house overlooking the garden containing the 150-year tree, which was full of new shoots on Wednesday.
The diseased tree had been due to be cut down because experts said its mould-infested trunk could snap at any moment, when local residents and tree experts intervened to save it.
Anne Frank wrote in her diary on February 23, 1944: "The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air."
"We were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak."
The chestnut tree weighs about 30 tonnes and stands in the garden of a canal house on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht overlooked by the annex the Frank family hid in for nearly two years during World War II. The former hiding place is now one of the most popular museums in Amsterdam.
There were fears that the trunk, which has a severe mould infection, could break and cause the tree to fall on the house and other buildings.
But after a year of legal wrangling the municipality and the tree's owner agreed to the steel beam construction designed to keep the tree in place in case the trunk breaks.
The construction would have cost around 75,000 euros (120,000 dollars) but the work and materials were largely donated, said Rob van der Leij, whose company oversaw the construction.
Experts differ widely on predicting the life span of the tree but Hella Fassbinder of the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation was optimistic Wednesday.
"That tree will survive all of us," she said.
