Length: 82 min.
Released: 2004
Comprehending the scale of huge numbers is difficult for anyone. When students at Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee were told during a unit on the Holocaust that six million people perished, students had trouble visualizing that quantity. They were shown pictures of shoes piled up, representing lives lost. Someone suggested gathering six million objects to best understand what six million of anything looks like, and the classes decided to use paper clips. A small object, ordinary, but symbolic
They embarked on their project, seemingly simple. Students brought in paper clips, and teachers turned aspects of it into academic tasks. Waves of students over several years participated in "The Holocaust Project", as the boxes piled up and filled rooms at the school. People sent paper clips in the mail with letters attached telling their personal stories. Their paper clips represented real people, and the project was a chance to honor them.
This documentary takes you to the heart of Whitwell: its teachers, its students, its residents. Rural Tennessee doesn't get much national coverage, but Whitwell became familiar to many from its request for paper clips. It's great to see a project bring students and the community together to learn history.
When the six million paper clips were all present and accounted for, the need arose for a fitting memorial to store them. (The final count was actually 11 million, which included children.) The solution was a boxcar which had actually transported prisoners to camps, abandoned and for sale in Germany. Funds were donated, journalists came, and a documentary was made. The boxcar was carefully transported to sit permanently in Whitwell. The Children's Holocaust Memorial is now a museum, and Whitwell students lead tours to students from Tennessee and other states. What a powerful way to make learning real.
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