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Anne Frank sapling planted on University of Iowa Pentacrest
Sapling came from horse chestnut she saw out the window of the Amsterdam house where she hid from the Nazis
Apr. 29, 2022 7:52 pm
Community members gather Friday during a ceremonial tree planting at the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest. The tree is a sapling that came from the horse chestnut tree Anne Frank looked at outside the window where she and her family hid from Nazis. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
University of Iowa arborist Andrew Dahl shovels dirt Friday during a tree planting at the University of Iowa to mark Arbor Day. The tree is a sapling that came from the horse chestnut tree Anne Frank looked at outside the window where she and her family hid from Nazis. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Agudas Achim Synagogue congregation members Eli Jaskdlka, Logan Jaskdlka and Tobiah Collins shovel dirt Friday during a ceremonial tree planting at the University of Iowa. The tree they were planting is a sapling that came from the horse chestnut tree Anne Frank looked at outside the window where she and her family hid from Nazis. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson speaks Friday during a ceremonial tree planting at the University of Iowa. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Community members listen Friday to remarks by Kirsten Kumpf Baele from the University of Iowa Department of German during a ceremonial tree planting at the UI. The tree is a sapling that came from the horse chestnut tree Anne Frank looked at outside the window where she and her family hid from Nazis. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Members of the University of Iowa Forestry Crew Grant Raitt (from left), Wayne Norman, Alan Allgood and UI arborist Andrew Dahl shovel dirt Friday during a ceremonial tree planting at the UI Pentacrest. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
IOWA CITY — As the sunflower is a symbol of strength and resistance for Ukranians under Russian attack, the chestnut tree Anne Frank saw from the window of the Secret Annex where she hid from Nazis gave her hope.
Janice Weiner, an Iowa City Council member and president of the Agudas Achim synagogue in Coralville, made the comparison during a celebration Friday — marking Arbor Day — of the planting on the University of Iowa Pentacrest of a sapling from Anne’s horse chestnut tree.
“As we and future generations nurture it, we can recall her words: ‘When I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more’,” Weiner quoted to more than 500 people gathered for the event in Macbride Hall.
The sapling, planted in front of Macbride, was given to the UI by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect USA.
Iowa City, the UNESCO City of Literature and home of the UI Writers' Workshop, is one of 13 U.S. sites to have a sapling from the tree Frank mentions three times in her famous diary, which documents the time from 1942 to 1944 when she and her family were hidden in a cramped Amsterdam attic to avoid Nazi persecution.
She could see the top of the tree from an attic window that wasn’t blacked out.
“Our chestnut tree is in full bloom,” she wrote on May 13, 1944, less than two months before the family was discovered and arrested. “It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”
This photo of Anne Frank at the Danville library and museum includes this quote from Frank: “We will all live with the objective of being happy: our lives are all different and yet all the same.” (Photo courtesy of John Miller)
The horse chestnut, which has distinctive white cones of flowers that bloom in May, is native to Europe, but grows well in Iowa. The state’s tallest horse chestnut, in Marshall County, is 61 feet tall with a trunk diameter of more than 12 feet, according to Iowa’s big tree registry.
When the original tree started to succumb to disease in the late 2005, the Anne Frank House took cuttings and germinated them to create saplings. The U.S. Department of Agriculture preserved the saplings, which now are being planted in the United States.
UI German lecturer Kirsten Kumpf Baele in 2017 started teaching a course called “Anne Frank and Her Story,” which introduced her to the sapling distribution. A year later she applied to the program through the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect USA.
As fewer young people have connections to World War II and the Holocaust, Kumpf Baele thought: “What can I as an educator do to grow more awareness of the tragedies of that time period?” she said at Friday’s celebration.
Last year, Kumpf Baele and the Iowa Youth Writing Project hosted an Anne Frank-themed writing workshop for middle school students. She also plans to use the tree to complement her course.
Spoken-word artist Amal Kassir on Friday encouraged the audience to consider Anne’s story not as a relic of the past, but as a narrative that reflects modern times. Anne’s family was denied refugee status in the United States just as many people fleeing conflict in Afghanistan and Ukraine struggle to gain entry to other countries.
“Because of this young woman, we don’t have a portrait piece in front of us, we have a mirror that we can see ourselves in,” Kassir said.
Co-sponsors of the UI proposal were the UI’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, International Programs, Department of German, Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Building and Landscape Services and Facilities Management. Other UI units wrote letters of support.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
