??By Joe Earle
joeearle@reporternewspapers.net
An exhibition recounting the life and death of Holocaust victim Anne Frank should soon open to the public in Sandy Springs.
The exhibition, assembled and operated by the Georgia Holocaust Commission, also will feature materials illustrating the work of William Alexander Scott III, an Atlanta journalist who, as a soldier in the U.S. Army, photographed the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Anne Frank, who died in 1945 at age 15 in the Bergen-Belson concentration camp, is remember around the world because of her diary, which was published after World War II and recounted her family’s life while hiding from the Nazis. From 1942 until they were discovered in 1944, Anne and members of her family lived in secret in rooms hidden behind an Amsterdam office building.
The Sandy Springs exhibit, located in a shopping mall on Roswell Road, is to include a model of the hidden rooms the Franks lived in and a life-sized recreation of Anne’s room. It also is to feature computers offering a virtual tour of the house and a recounting of the Frank family’s life in hiding and a 28-minute movie about Anne’s life.
“It’s going to be quite a learning experience,” said Sylvia Wygoda, executive director of the exhibition and chair emeritus of the state holocaust commission.
The exhibit has been displayed elsewhere in Georgia in recent years. The Anne Frank exhibition was displayed in Decatur from 2007 through last year and in Cobb County prior to that. A similar exhibit was mounted in 1996 in Roswell in connection with the Atlanta Olympics.
Wygoda said the commission hopes the exhibit will stay in Sandy Springs.
“We like being in Sandy Springs,” she said. “It’s comfortable and convenient and very friendly. We already have groups booked (for tours) for several months.”
No formal opening date has been set for the Sandy Springs exhibition, but a school group is scheduled to take the first tour of the exhibit on Feb. 2, officials said. The exhibition will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays and from noon until 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, Wygoda said. Admission is free.