Anne Frank's Tree It isn't just my tree that we will lose. This famed tree will be lost too.

The diseased tree in the courtyard behind the canal-side warehouse where the Frank family took refuge for more than two years has been attacked by an aggressive fungus and a moth, called the horse chestnut leaf miner. Experts estimate the tree's age at 150-170 years.

The chestnut is familiar to some 25 million readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Anne often looked at it longingly from the attic, the only window that was not blacked out to prevent anyone seeing movement inside the apartment in the rear of the warehouse on Prinsengracht street where the Frank family hid.

There is loss when something gives so much life and then must live. And the world keeps changing.  ¶ 11/14/2006 12:21:00 PM