An Amsterdam resident has put for sale on eBay a chestnut that he says came from the tree that Anne Frank gazed upon while hiding from the Nazis, as activists fight to save the diseased tree from being felled.

"I had this idea for a few years, then I saw that the tree was in the news and I decided to put the chestnut up for auction," said 34-year-old Charles Kuijpers, who lives next door to the garden where the tree stands.

City officials recently decided that the 27-ton tree was so diseased

that the risk that the trunk could break was too great, and said that it would be removed on Wednesday.

Bids for the chestnut have reached $700 in the auction, which is titled

"Grow your own Anne Frank tree with a chestnut".

The Jewish teenager described gazing longingly at the tree in the diary

she kept during her two years in hiding. Anne and her family hid until they were betrayed and arrested in August 1944. The towering horse chestnut was one of the few examples of nature and normal life she could see.

Copyright Ha'aretz News 2007