http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22768246-23109,00.html ACTIVISTS opposed to the felling of the chestnut tree Anne Frank could see as she hid from the Nazis have won the right to a court hearing that may save it from the chop. The tree, behind the Amsterdam warehouse annex where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis until 1944, is so diseased and damaged that there is a risk it could topple over. It is scheduled to be cut down on Thursday. But activists and a group of tree conservationists have stepped in to stop the felling, saying the decision is too hasty and the authorities should consider ways to save the tree. "If there is a will to keep the tree alive and standing, there are possibilities," said Edwin Koot, head of the Tree Foundation that is fighting to stop the tree being removed. The foundation went to a local court today and asked for an injunction. The court agreed to hold a hearing on the matter on Tuesday, a day before the planned felling. Anne and her family hid until they were betrayed and arrested in August 1944. The towering horse chestnut was one of the few examples of nature and normal life she could see. Plans to cut down the tree have been delayed for more than a year as the Amsterdam city council dealt with objections from activists. But a recent investigation showed the risk the trunk could break was too great. "The risk that the trunk will break, causing the 27-tonne tree to fall - is unacceptably big," the city council said this week. Once cut down it would be lifted out by crane. But the Tree Foundation's Koot said there were other alternatives, such as propping up the diseased chestnut tree with steel wires, or building a metal frame to support it. The tree is due to be replaced with a sapling grown from grafts off the original, which stands in a garden completely surrounded by other buildings. Anne Frank's diary, which she began shortly before going into hiding in summer 1942, became one of the world's most widely read books after publication in 1947. Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, just weeks before it was liberated.
