Six Million “Paper Clips” Offer Holocaust Education
As part of its Holocaust Remembrance Film Series, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, will show the documentary “Paper Clips” on Monday, April 10, at 7 p.m. in 117 Reed Union Building. “Paper Clips” tells the moving story about how students at Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee responded to what had been to them a completely unfamiliar chapter in human history, the Holocaust. The film is free and open to the public.
The town of Whitwell is a tiny community of two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the students of Whitwell Middle School took on a project, launched out of their principal’s desire to help her students open their eyes to the diversity of the world beyond their insulated valley.
Struggling to grasp the concept of six million Holocaust victims, the students decide to collect six million paper clips, which represent each individual exterminated by the Nazis, to better understand the extent of this crime against humanity. The amazing result, which stands in their schoolyard permanently, is an unforgettable lesson of how a committed group of children can change the world, one classroom at a time.
Called an extraordinary experiment in Holocaust education, the film details how the students met Holocaust survivors from around the world and how their experience transformed them and their community.
The Holocaust Remembrance Film Series is sponsored by the Holocaust Remembrance Network, a consortium that includes Penn State Behrend and the Jewish Community Council of Erie, along with Allegheny College, Edinboro University, Gannon University and Mercyhurst College. For more information, call the Office of Student Activities at Penn State Behrend at 814-898-6171.