One day in May this year, I was visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam with a friend from Germany. The director of the museum, Hans Westra, is a long-time family friend. He gave us a short private tour of the secret annex where Anne Frank lived for 25 months before being captured by the Germans and sent off to Auschwitz. As he showed us the pantry of the house, which is normally closed to the public, Westra pointed out of the window, towards a gigantic chestnut tree sitting on the back of the building. ‘That tree will have to go soon,’ he said. ‘It’s sick. Come the day of the felling, I reckon there will be a lot of media attention.’

Hans Westra is a seasoned fellow who has showed many a world-famous visitor around his museum, including the Dutch queen, Yassir Arafat and Hillary Clinton. But on that day in May I don’t think he could have foreseen the collective hysteria that swept Amsterdam last week, when the city of Amsterdam finally decided to ax the tree.

Anne Frank liked the chestnut tree. It consoled her as she and her family lived their anxious life tucked away in the annex at the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, from July 1942 until August 1944. She devoted three entries in her diary to the tree, praising its beauty and adding, "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." (February 23, 1944)

Now Anne’s tree has been diseased with a rare fungus, and several experts have declared it a danger to the public. The city council had given the actual owner of the tree (the museum’s immediate neighbor) a license to fell. The Anne Frank House, that supports the chopping down, had already anticipated the event day by opening a website that commemorates the tree. (www.annefranktree.com). British actress Emma Thompson came to Amsterdam to launch the site, where visitors can leave their messages and drawings on a ‘virtual tree’.

But before the city lumbers could even start to make their way to the Prinsengracht, intense protests erupted. The mayor of Amsterdam was engulfed by thousands of e-mails from all over the world (especially Germany). Experts hired by the Dutch Tree Foundation came to the Anne Frank House to proof that the tree was still strong enough to withstand a typhoon (never mind that typhoons don’t ever occur in the Netherlands). A celebrity Dutch writer called Jessica Durlacher went on television with tears in her eyes, pleading the tree’s case. Meanwhile, reporters and TV crews from all over the world camped outside the Anne Frank’s House. Tree fever hit its zenith when 10,000 dollar was offered on eBay for a single chestnut from the tree, put on sale by a savvy neighbor.

The case was brought before a judge, who – after having come out in person to examine the tree – decided it should be granted some more time. The friends of the tree, an odd coalition of environmentalists and Amsterdam beltway intellectuals, now have until mid-January to discuss alternative plans with the city council (some have suggested the tree be anchored to the museum with cables). All in all, it’s a very Dutch compromise.

And a very Dutch issue, too. In the Netherlands, anything related to WWII still stirs up controversy. The Dutch still haven’t seem to come to terms with the things that happened during the war that hit Dutch soil since Napoleon occupied the Netherlands. (Almost three quarters of Dutch Jews were deported and killed by the Nazis, significantly more than in neighboring countries). Sixty years on, WWII is still the point of reference for many a political and social debate.

The other day, I called Hans Westra in Amsterdam. When I mentioned the T-word, he uttered a deep sigh. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘There’s so much misery in the world, and people are up in arms about a tree.’ But he agreed on the vehement emotions that the war still arouses. ‘There’s definitely some sense of guilt,’ he said. ‘Something along the lines of: we weren’t able to save Anne, but at least we’ll save her tree.’