One paper clip doesn’t tell much of a story. But 6 million do.
The story is about Protestant students in Tennessee’s Whitwell Middle School, located in a former coal mining community outside Chattanooga. It’s also about learning from other cultures.
In the late 1990s, Whitwell Principal Linda Hooper and teachers David Smith and Sandra Roberts set up a voluntary after-school program for eighth-graders to teach them about events that led to the deaths of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
To the students and teachers, 6 million was a number too vast to visualize. What does 6 million even look like? That’s when they decided to collect one paper clip for each life lost.
Why paper clips? During World War II, Norwegians wore paper clips – often on a lapel – to show their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. The students set up a Web site asking for help collecting paper clips. By the end of the 1999-2000 school year, they had collected about 750,000.
When two German journalists, White House correspondents for a group of German newspapers, heard about the students’ efforts, the collection truly took off. Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand and Peter Schroeder were so moved by the students on a visit to Whitwell that they wrote a book, The Paper Clip Project, that was published in Germany. Then the trickle of paper clips became a flood.
Paper clips came from schools, churches and civic groups. Some of the most meaningful paper clips came from Holocaust survivors and the families of victims. Their envelopes often contained one or more clips along with the names and stories of those they had lost. Almost 100 binders containing these letters (and e-mails) are housed in the Whitwell library. Tom Hanks, Bill Cosby, Steven Spielberg and former President Bill Clinton sent in paper clips. Students and teachers spent hours counting clips and reading the letters, sometimes coming into school as early as 5:30 a.m. and staying late. Family and friends helped. At one point, the school was getting an average of 12 crates of letters and clips each day.
"By spring 2001, we had about 2 million paper clips," Roberts the principal recalls. "Seven weeks later, we had 24 million."
Sharing Their Stories
In Whitwell, a town of fewer than 2,000, few middle-schoolers had even met a Jewish person. That changed when four Holocaust survivors from Long Island, N.Y., traveled there to see the collection and share the students’ experiences. Tears were shed on both sides, and new friendships were forged.
By summer 2001, the students had 30 million paper clips, far surpassing their goal. The received paper clips from all 50 states and more than 50 countries. The question of what to do next lingered. How could they display the collection in a meaningful way?
Hooper’s goal was to obtain a German rail car that had transported Jews to concentration camps during the war. With the help of their new friends, the German journalists, a rail car was found at a museum in Robel, Germany. The Germans bought the car and shipped it to the United States via freighter, and it began a rail journey to Whitwell.
After the rail car arrived, the students, faculty and community cleaned and prepared it for the 11 million paper clips representing the 6 million Jews who died as well as 5 million Gypsies, homosexuals and other Holocaust victims. The additional paper clips are stored in the adjacent monument.
Butterflies Take Flight
The small park around the rail car features 18 butterfly mosaics and wire butterfly sculptures made by a local artist. In Hebrew, the number 18 is "chai" or "life." They are a reference to a poem written by Pavel Friedmann, a child who lived in the Terezin concentration camp in 1942.
On Nov. 9, 2001, the anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in which Jewish businesses and synagogues were destroyed by the Nazis, Whitwell commemorated the opening of the Children’s Holocaust Memorial. Among the invited guests were students from Atlanta’s Davis Academy, a Hebrew day school. Academy students sang the mourner’s song known as the Kaddish.
The story of the memorial is now a documentary film called Paper Clips (Miramax, 2005), directed by Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab. It is available in a two-DVD set and an 80-minute educational version (amazon.com).
As a result, interest in the memorial has skyrocketed. According to Roberts, the middle school receives about 500 visitors a month. School groups from as far away as Michigan and California have come. Canadian travelers on their way to and from Florida frequently visit. The memorial-making students have traveled to Boston, St. Louis and Miami to share the story of their paper clip project. Because of demand, Whitwell eighth-graders must now apply to participate in the program.
A new middle school slated for construction will include a visitors’ center that will house the 30,000 documents and letters collected with the paper clips. When the school is complete, the memorial will be moved. Donations for construction of the visitor’s center are being sought.
"The focus now is to continue the lesson of the Holocaust," Roberts said. "To go to other schools and keep the drive alive. To teach the power of children."
For more information, visit www.marionschools.org/holocaust
Norwegians wore paper clips to show their opposition to anti-Semitism, as represented by this sculpture at the memorial. (Photo by Traci Rylands)