It was a long drive, four hours to go 175 miles, much of it on twisting mountain roads. While vacationing with family members in southern Kentucky, my wife and I realized we were reasonably close to Whitwell, Tennessee. Whitwell is home to the Children’s Holocaust Memorial. We simply had to make the trip.
The Children’s Holocaust Memorial began as a Social Studies project by students at Whitwell Middle School in 1998. Students were trying to envision the number, 6,000,000. In the course of their studies they discovered that paper clips were used as a symbol of resistance and solidarity by Norwegians who were under the boot of Nazi rule. The students began to collect paper clips.
The story of their incredible journey and the people they met along the way forms the basis of the documentary film, Paper Clips. As of today, the students have received more than thirty million paper clips and more than thirty thousand documents and letters. These have come from all fifty states, fifty foreign countries, from every continent.
The students wanted to use the paperclips to honor the memories of the holocaust victims. With the overwhelming response to their project, they needed a way to house the collection. Two people they had met would prove to have the perfect answer
Peter Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder Hildebrand were White House correspondents
for a German newspaper. They had traveled to Whitwell to meet and interview
the students. Recognizing the problem of a proper way to house the paper
clips, they traveled to Germany and located a boxcar that had been used
to carry victims to the death camps. They, and caring friends, had the
box car shipped to The States and delivered to the school.
Earlier this Spring, I showed the documentary film to my students at Harrison Elementary School in Warsaw, Indiana. My students wrote personal reflections about the film and we sent them to our good friends, Marsha Goren and her students, at Ein Ganim School in Petach Tikva, Israel. We have joined with these Globaldreamers in a number of projects over the past two years. I had been deeply touched by what my students had written about the film. I could not possibly let an opportunity to visit the Memorial slip away.
During the school year, students give tours of the Memorial. I did not know what to expect during the Summer when school was not in session. I found their web site, http://www.marionschools.org/holocaust I did not think I would have much trouble finding it in a small Tennessee town.
I turned from Highway 28 onto Valley View Road. On a knoll to the left, I saw Whitwell Elementary School. Driving around the hill I found a sign for the Middle School and a lane to take us there. The lane, however, was blocked by a locked gate. Disappointed but undaunted, I backtracked to the elementary school and drove toward it through an open gate.