What can one person possibly do in this large world? How can one person, or one
small group accomplish anything significant to help bring people together in
understanding and peace? Listen to this true and moving story....
In 1998 deputy principal and football coach David Smith, at Whitwell Middle
School (Whitwell, Tennessee) attended a teacher training course in nearby
Chattanooga. He came back and proposed that an after-school course on the
Holocaust be offered at the school. This -- in a school with hardly any ethnic
and no Jewish students.
English and social sciences teacher Sandra Roberts was selected to teach, and in
October, 1998 she held the first session. She began by reading aloud from Anne
Frank's DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL and Elie Wiesel's NIGHT. She read aloud because
most of the students could not afford to buy books.
What gripped the eighth graders most as the course progressed, was the sheer
number of Jews put to death by the Third Reich. Six million. They could hardly
fathom such an immense figure.
One day, Roberts was explaining to the class that some compassionate people in
1940s Europe stood up for the Jews. After the Nazis invaded Norway, many
courageous Norwegians expressed solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens by
pinning ordinary paper clips to their lapels, as Jews were forced to wear a Star
of David on theirs.
Then someone had the idea to collect six million paper clips to represent the
six million Holocaust victims. The idea caught on, and the students began
bringing in paper clips, from home, from aunts and uncles and friends. They set
up a Web page. A few weeks later, the first letter arrived -- then others. Many
contained paper clips. By the end of the school year, the group had assembled
100,000 clips. But it occurred to the teachers that collecting six million paper
clips at that rate would take a lifetime.
The group's activities have long spilled over from Roberts' classroom. It's now
called the Holocaust Project. Across the hall, students have created a
concentration camp simulation with paper cutouts of themselves pasted on the
wall. Chicken wire stretches across the wall to represent electrified fences.
Wire mesh is hung with shoes to represent the millions of shoes the victims left
behind when they were marched to death chambers. And every year now they reenact
the "walk" to give students at least an inkling of what people must have felt
when Nazi guards marched them off to camps.
Meanwhile, the paper clip counting continues. Students gather for their
Wednesday meeting, each wearing the group's polo shirt emblazoned: "Changing the
World, One Clip at a Time." All sorts of clips arrive -- silver and bronze
colored clips, colorful plastic-coated clips, small clips, large clips, round
clips, triangular clips and even clips fashioned from wood. The students file
all the letters they receive in ring binders.
Their plan is to obtain an authentic German railroad car from the 1940s, one
that may have actually transported victims to camps. The car will be turned into
a museum that will house all the paper clips, as well as display the many
letters received from around the world.
When the project is finally completed, for generations of Whitwell eighth
graders, a paper clip will never again be just a paper clip. Instead, it will
carry a message of perseverance, empathy, tolerance and understanding. One
student put it like this: "Now, when I see someone, I think before I speak, I
think before I act and I think before I judge."
Can one person, or one small group, truly do anything to help bring humanity
together in understanding and peace? Just ask the students at Whitwell and all
of those around the world who are helping them to collect paper clips!
POSTSCRIPT: You may go to http://www.Marionschools.org for more information on
the Holocaust Project, and check out the latest paper clip count. Would you like
to help the students? Paper clips are gratefully accepted by: Whitwell Middle
School, Holocaust Project, 1130 Main St., Whitwell, TN 37397. Almost four
million paper clips have been collected. Let's help bring them over the top!
Author unknown. If anyone has a proprietary interest in this story please
authenticate and I will be happy to credit, or remove, as the circumstances
dictate.
Thanks to Life Support
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