Anne Frank's tree
The Enterprise doesn't run a lot of international news, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We aren't the Houston Chronicle or the Dallas Morning News, and we shouldn't pretend we are. We emphasize news closer to home, and that's a worthy mission.
One consequence of that approach is that the international news which does make it into our paper is usually pretty interesting. Or in the case of today's article on page 14A, pretty sad.
If there's a more heartbreaking tale that came out of World War II than "The Diary of Anne Frank," I don't know what it is. The Orange Community Players recently staged that play, and it's a production that all of us should see at least once.
Today our readers learned that the chestnut tree which gave a bit of hope to that poor girl has to come down. It is beseiged by fungus and moths, and after more than a century and a half in Amsterdam, its alloted span has run out.
We are sad -- not for the tree, but for what it represents, a living link to Anne Frank, her tormented family and the millions of innocent people who perished in the Holocaust.
The tree may live on in the form of grafts, and that would be nice. What does live on, and it's far more important, are the poignant words of a simple teenage girl trapped in a nightmare:
"From my favorite spot on the floor (of the attic) I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. ... 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."
You wonder how men with guns and uniforms could have hunted children like Anne Frank. You wonder how "decent" people could stand by and watch. You ponder the fact that Anne Frank died in Belsen just two months before the war ended. And with all that's going on in the world today, you mourn the demise of a tree across the ocean.
One consequence of that approach is that the international news which does make it into our paper is usually pretty interesting. Or in the case of today's article on page 14A, pretty sad.
If there's a more heartbreaking tale that came out of World War II than "The Diary of Anne Frank," I don't know what it is. The Orange Community Players recently staged that play, and it's a production that all of us should see at least once.
Today our readers learned that the chestnut tree which gave a bit of hope to that poor girl has to come down. It is beseiged by fungus and moths, and after more than a century and a half in Amsterdam, its alloted span has run out.
We are sad -- not for the tree, but for what it represents, a living link to Anne Frank, her tormented family and the millions of innocent people who perished in the Holocaust.
The tree may live on in the form of grafts, and that would be nice. What does live on, and it's far more important, are the poignant words of a simple teenage girl trapped in a nightmare:
"From my favorite spot on the floor (of the attic) I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. ... 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."
You wonder how men with guns and uniforms could have hunted children like Anne Frank. You wonder how "decent" people could stand by and watch. You ponder the fact that Anne Frank died in Belsen just two months before the war ended. And with all that's going on in the world today, you mourn the demise of a tree across the ocean.
posted by Thomas Taschinger at 11:02 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home