Holocaust victim's memory will live on in East Lancashire (From This Is Lancashire)

Holocaust victim's memory will live on in East Lancashire

4:57pm Friday 3rd September 2010 in

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THE memory of teenage war victim Anne Frank is to live on in East Lancashire through the planting of symbolic trees.

Residents in Burnley and Blackburn will have the chance to suggest locations to plant chestnut trees, which brought her comfort as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during the Second World War.

The idea is part of a youth-led public exhibition by The Anne Frank Trust UK, which will spend a week in the Exchange Arcade, Blackburn, from today, before moving to Burnley at the end of the month.

Called ‘Take A Stand’, it aims to encourage people to read Anne’s diary, and engage with creative voluntary activities.

The chestnut tree is mentioned in her diary, which became a worldwide best-seller after her death in a concentration camp in 1945, aged just 15.

“From my favou-rite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appear-ing like silver,” she wrote in her dairy on Febr-uary 23, 1944.

Last month, the 150-year-old tree toppled over in strong winds and had to be cut down.

A sapling will be planted at Batsford Arboretum, near Gloucester, on September 25.

Executive director Gillian Walnes said: “We are now asking people to keep Anne’s hopes and dreams alive by planting a tree to symbolically replace this special tree that has just been lost to the world.

“Anne Frank trees also honour and memorialise the millions of children like Anne who have died as a result of persecution, conflict and inhumanity,” she added.

The work in East Lancashire comes after the Trust screened a film about Anne Frank, and political activism, at the Burnley and Pendle Faith Centre, at Thomas Whitham Sixth Form, in June.