Paper Clips is about the Paper Clips Project begun by middle school students from the small southeastern Tennessee city of Whitwell who created a monument for the Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany. It started in 1998 as a simple 8th-grade project and evolved into one gaining worldwide attention. At last count, over 30 million paper clips had been received. The film came out in 2004.
Through Internet research, the students discovered that Johan Vaaler designed a loop of metal, that he was Jewish, Norwegian, and the Norwegians wore them on their lapels during WWII as a silent protest against Nazi policies. The students decided to collect 6,000,000 paper clips to represent the estimated 6,000,000 Jews killed between 1939 and 1945 under the authority of the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler.
At first the project went slowly, as it did not gain much publicity. Students created a website and sent out letters to friends, family and celebrities. The project began to snowball after it received attention from Peter and Dagmar Schroeder, journalists who were born in Germany during World War II and who cover the White House for German newspapers. The big break in the US came with an article in the Washington Post on April 7, 2001, written by Dita Smith. After the article, many more paper clips were being sent. Soon, millions of paper clips started to flood the school.
One of the most amazing and surprising things to me as I watched this documentary was the location of the project. The small rural town Whitwell has about 1,600 residents, and according to the U.S. census, 97.35% of them are white. There was not a single Jewish person among the population of 425 students when the project began. Out of the 425 students that attend the school, there are only five African Americans and one Hispanic.
Even more surprising is that about 40 miles away from Whitwell is the Rhea County Courthouse, where, in 1925, a teacher was convicted for teaching evolution during the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. The trial upheld a statute which outlawed teaching any theory that denies the Divine Creation. Along with this is the irony that a hundred miles from Whitwell, in Pulaski, Tennessee, the infamous Ku Klux Klan was reportedly born.
The result of the Paper Clip Project is the Children's Holocaust Memorial. The memorial, located on the middle school grounds, consists of an authentic German transport car (which arrived in Baltimore on September 9, 2001) surrounded by a small garden.The rail car is filled with 11 million paper clips (6 million for murdered Jews and 5 million for Gypsies, Catholics, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups).
Eighteen butterflies sculptured of twisted copper are embedded in concrete around the rail car. Butterflies came from a poem written by a child who lived in Terezin concentration camp in 1942 (I Never Saw Another Butterfly) and the number 18 in Hebrew symbolizes life. Inside the rail car, besides the paper clips, there is a suitcase filled with letters of apology to Anne Frank by a class of German schoolchildren.
A sculpture designed by an artist from Ooltewah, Tennessee stands next to the car, memorializing the 1.5 million children murdered by the Nazis, incorporating another 11 million paper clips.
Since watching this extraordinary film, my heart has been a bit overwhelmed by what these students accomplished. At an age when teens try so hard to fit in and run with the herd, these students chose to celebrate diversity and embrace tolerance in profound ways. In the film, the vice-principal talks about the prejudice he grew up with and was taught by his father. He vows to break the cycle in his family and raise his sons differently by teaching tolerance in his home. The students seem to be filled with pride as they give tours through the railroad car outside their school and answer questions about the project.
I can't recommend this amazing film enough to you. It is one of the most powerful stories I have ever seen told on film.
I hope you are having a great week. I'm watching the season finale of Glee tonight - a little less serious than Paper Clips. Thanks for being a part of my journey!
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