WASHINGTON — A sapling grown from the tree that Holocaust victim Anne Frank wrote about while in hiding will be planted this month on the US Capitol grounds, congressional leaders announced Tuesday. 
 
 “The Anne Frank memorial tree is an offspring of the horse chestnut tree that was featured in Anne’s diary writings,” House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote in a letter to members of Congress. 
 
 The tree “grew outside of the Amsterdam building where she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II,” they explained. 
 
 The planting on the Capitol’s west front lawn will occur during a ceremony April 30. 
 
 The young tree is among several saplings created from the original tree, which collapsed outside the Amsterdam annex in 2010. 
 
 Frank wrote her observations from June 1942 to August 1944, while the Jewish girl and her family remained in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. 
 
 She was captured August 4, 1944, and she died seven months later at age 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 
 
 Her diary was rescued by a family friend, and through the help of Anne’s father Otto Frank was published and eventually translated into more than 60 languages, including in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.” ||||| * Fungus-infected tree saved from felling in 2007 
 
 
 
 * Tree misses Anne Frank House, no injuries reported 
 
 
 
 * Pieces of the tree offered for sale on Internet 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Adds support group comments) 
 
 
 
 By Aaron Gray-Block 
 
 
 
 AMSTERDAM, Aug 23 (Reuters) - A giant chestnut tree that comforted Dutch diarist Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War Two collapsed in heavy wind and rain on Monday. 
 
 
 
 No one was hurt and the 150-year old tree fell across a fence, missing the Anne Frank House, which has been turned into a museum and was full of tourists. 
 
 
 
 "It broke off like a match. It broke off completely about one metre off the ground," a spokesman for the house said. 
 
 
 
 The tree was one of the few signs of nature visible to the Jewish teenager from the concealed attic she hid in for over two years during World War Two and it is mentioned in the diary which became a worldwide best-seller after her death in a concentration camp in 1945. 
 
 
 
 "Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote in May 1944, not long before she was betrayed to the Nazis. 
 
 
 
 The tree had developed fungus and was set to be felled in 2007 due to concerns for the safety of the 1 million people who visit Anne Frank’s house each year. 
 
 
 
 But officials and conservationists later agreed to secure it with a steel frame to prolong its life and saplings from the tree were planted last year in an Amsterdam park and other cities around the world. 
 
 
 
 A Dutch tree foundation, which fought to keep the tree alive with another support group, said horticulturalists had estimated the tree could still have lived for dozens of years. 
 
 
 
 Arnold Heertje, a member of the Support Anne Frank Tree group said there were no plans to plant a sapling on the site or preserve the tree’s remains. 
 
 
 
 "You have to bow your head to the facts. The tree has fallen and will be cut into pieces and disappear. The intention was not to keep this tree alive forever. It has lived for 150 years and now it’s over and we’re not going to extend it," he said. 
 
 
 
 Parts of the tree, located on a residential property adjacent to the Anne Frank House, were later being offered for sale on Dutch auction website marktplaats.nl. The highest offer was 10 million euros ($12.72 million). (Additional reporting by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Noah Barkin and Nina Chestney)
– A sapling grown from the chestnut tree that gave Anne Frank solace while hiding from the Nazis will be planted on the lawn of the US Capitol, reports AFP. The original tree collapsed in 2010 in Amsterdam, but it lives on in offshoots like the one that will be planted in DC on April 30. The National Journal notes a passage from Frank's diary in February 1944: ("We) looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak." Frank would be captured about six months later and taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died at age 15.