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12:21 p.m. Tuesday, February 9, 2010

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Anne Frank exhibit moves to Sandy Springs

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By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A museum exhibit honoring the brief life of Anne Frank opens Tuesday in Sandy Springs.

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Giant banners take up a room at the Anne Frank exhibit, which opens on Monday, Feb. 8, in what could be its new permanent home in the Parkside Shopping Center in Sandy Springs.

Phil Skinner, pskinner@ajc.com Giant banners take up a room at the Anne Frank exhibit, which opens on Monday, Feb. 8, in what could be its new permanent home in the Parkside Shopping Center in Sandy Springs.

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Exhibit Coordinator, Sandra Craine, sets up a replica of the room that Anne Frank lived in while hiding with her family.

Phil Skinner, pskinner@ajc.com Exhibit Coordinator, Sandra Craine, sets up a replica of the room that Anne Frank lived in while hiding with her family.

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The 600-photograph, 8,000-word “Anne Frank in the World” exhibit has been closed since December, since its lease expired in Decatur.

The move to Sandy Springs is the third in six years for the program, owned by the Anne Frank House in the Netherlands and run by the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust.

But the exhibit will be the first tourist attraction in Sandy Springs, a 4-year-old city with a large Jewish population. Officials there hope to make it a permanent fixture in its home in a former office space at the Parkside Shopping Center on Roswell Drive.

“I personally am very committed to the idea of keeping alive the history of the Holocaust so it can never happen again and keeping this tremendous attraction in our community,” said Mayor Eva Galambos, whose husband, John, is a Holocaust survivor.

The lease requires the city make a $50,000 annual payment to the Holocaust Commission. Doing so keeps the exhibit free.

Boosters in Sandy Springs wanted to raise at least $100,000 a year to renovate its new home and ensure the program would stay.

So far, city leaders, residents and businesses have donated $130,000 to help pay for three part-time coordinators as well as basics such as utilities.

“We’d like to build up the money for programming and events,” said City Councilwoman Dianne Fries, who has worked on the fund-raising.

Last week, two school groups visited the museum.

The exhibit tells the story of Anne Frank, from her days of freedom in the 1930s to hiding with her family in Amsterdam to her 1945 death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The exhibit, considered the largest of its kind in the country, also includes a 28-minute film featuring the only known footage of the girl, leaning over a balcony to watch a wedding.

Exhibit preview

“Anne Frank in the World”

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays; from noon to 4 p.m. weekends; closed Mondays. Admission is free. In a second-floor suite at 5920 Roswell Road, Sandy Springs.