Chesnut from Anne Frank's Tree Up for Sale on eBay

NOTE TO SELF: How sad and pathetic that eBay allows this "auction"

Talk about living off the avails of a dead person. Is it just me or does this news item leave a bad taste in one's mouth?

Anne Frank's tree may be doomed, but you can have a chestnut from it for only a few thousand dollars.

Charles Kuijpers, who lives next door to the famous house in Amsterdam where the German-Jewish girl was hidden from Nazi occupiers during World War II, has put what he says is a chestnut from the famed tree up for auction on eBay.

Anne wrote in her diary, which became a bestseller after her death, that during the two years she was hidden in the house's attic, the horse-chestnut tree was her only reminder of the natural world.

"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," Kuijpers told Reuters.

The tree, estimated to be between 150 and 175, has been in poor health for several years as it fends off parasites, and municipal authorities are set to tear it down Wednesday, pending a court hearing.

In August 1944, Nazi police raided the hiding place, and Anne and her sister Margot were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died during a typhus epidemic in March 1945.

British soldiers liberated the camp in April. Anne Frank's body has never been found.

It would be acceptable and even a commendable act if Mr. Kuijpers would indicate that he plans to use the money from the auction towards some type of charity that helps homeless children or children living in war-torn countries.