text: * 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) 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ||||| FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2007 file photo a view on the chestnut tree is seen which comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II, and the attic window in the secret annex at the... (Associated Press) 
   
   The monumental chestnut tree that cheered Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis was toppled by wind and heavy rain on Monday. 
   
   The once mighty tree, now diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged a brick wall and several sheds, but nearby buildings _ including the Anne Frank House museum _ escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said. 
   
   "Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down," said museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart. "Luckily no one was hurt." 
   
   A global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court. 
   
   The 150-year-old tree suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half its trunk to rot. 
   
   Two years ago city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling, but that failed under windy weather Monday. 
   
   The Netherlands' Trees Institute, one of the most prominent supporters of the preservation project, said it was "unpleasantly surprised" by the news of the tree's fall early Monday afternoon. 
   
   "On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades" with the support structure, the institute said in a statement. 
   
   "Alas, in the event it seems that nature is stronger." 
   
   The institute said it didn't know why the support structure had failed. 
   
   Many clones of the tree have been taken, including 11 planted at sites around the United States and 150 at a park in Amsterdam. It is not clear whether a new tree will replace the original one on the same spot, since it rests on property belonging to a neighbor. 
   
   The Jewish teenager made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until her family was arrested in August 1944. 
   
   "Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind." 
   
   She also wrote: "As long as this exists, ... and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies _ while this lasts I cannot be unhappy." 
   
   Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her diary was recovered and published after her death. It has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.
target: – A tree beloved by Anne Frank is gone, toppled by a storm today in Amsterdam. The chestnut tree stood outside the window of the attic where Frank hid, and she often wrote about it in her diaries. In the years since her death, the 150-year-old “Anne Frank Tree” became rotted and diseased; city officials ordered it felled, but a 2007 campaign managed to save it. Its trunk was encased in a steep support system, but even that failed to protect it from today’s strong winds, the AP reports. No one was hurt, and the nearby Anne Frank House museum was unharmed. The tree lives on through more than 160 clones planted in Amsterdam and the US. “From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind,” Frank wrote in 1944. Pieces of the tree are now for sale on a Dutch auction site, Reuters adds.