Things be CRAZY at the Anne Frank House

I just read an AMAZING, totally bonkers article in the NY Times. Anne Frank, basically the most famous Dutch person ever, wrote in her diary that her only contact with nature while in hiding was seeing the top of a Chestnut tree growing in her neighbor’s garden. That tree developed a fungal infection a few years ago and was slated to be felled. A group dedicated to saving the tree decided to spend $170,000 (!) on building a brace that would preserve the tree for 5-10 years (big whoop). OK, now you are thinking that this tree is probably a magical, wish granting tree that would justify spending that much money on saving it. It’s NOT. Just a regular old diseased tree.

Says the article:
Board members of the Support Anne Frank Tree foundation, the group responsible for the tree, are incensed with the contractor they hired to build a metal brace meant to extend the sick tree’s life. They accuse him of botching the job and killing the tree, and then stealing the tree’s remains and leaving them to rot instead of distributing them to the Jewish museums and other institutions around the world that would like to have them. Perhaps inevitably, given the context and the hard feelings the matter has stirred, they have also accused him of acting like a Nazi.

What?! You can’t just call everyone a Nazi, you guys! The contractor says that he is pretty bummed since by removing this tree he has been compared to “Auschwitz and the gas chambers.” IT’S NOT LIKE HE BURNED THE TREE! HE STILL HAS IT. YOU CAN’T JUST CALL SOMEBODY A GAS CHAMBER AND PRETEND LIKE THAT’S COOL. Maybe if the Board members should be calling anyone a Nazi, it should be the tree fungus that set out to destroy their precious tree. Ugh, so horrible. Everyone should be ashamed of themselves.

posted by Caroline