A foundation set up to preserve a chestnut tree mentioned by Jewish teenager Anne Frank in her World War II diary must pay 16,000 euros ($21,000) for its clean-up, a Dutch court ruled Wednesday. The Amsterdam-based Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation said however it did not have the money to pay a company responsible for the historic chestnut's removal and storage after it collapsed in strong winds in 2010.
"At the moment we don't have the money and probably never will," foundation official Arnold Heertje told AFP, following the judgment against it by the Amsterdam District Court.
The Van der Leij company in 2008 built a steel frame to support the diseased tree, some 20 metres (65 feet) tall and estimated to be more than 160 years old, which was overlooked by the annexe where Frank and her family hid from Nazi occupiers until found out in 1944.
After it was blown down in August 2010, Van der Leij cut the tree "into very large pieces which were stored in a dry and ventilated area," its spokesman Bram van Uchelen told AFP.
The court ordered the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation to pay Van der Leij -- which lodged a claim -- 16,000 euros in removal and storage costs.
If no payment was received, Van der Leij was under no obligation to give back the tree's remains, the court said.
Anne Frank died in 1945 aged 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany and the annexe where she hid while writing a diary is today a popular museum on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht.
She wrote in her diary on February 23, 1944: "The two of us looked at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped though the air."
"We were so moved and entranced we couldn't speak."
Saplings from the chestnut were been planted around the world including in Paris and at the White House before the tree buckled two years ago.
"In the beginning when the tree fell, museums and institutions showed interest -- they wanted a piece of the tree," Heertje said.
"But now interest has waned. It's unlikely that we will be contacted again."

EJP