Paper Clips

I sent the below email to the principal of the Whitwell Middle School in Tennesee, where groups of students collected paper clips to represent the people who died in the Holocaust and later built a Holocaust memorial including a rail road car imported from Germany that once carried Jews to their deaths:

Hello Ms. Hooper,

I just watched the documentary of the paper clip project on HBO and I wanted to express my feelings to you and your community. As a student, I studied the Holocaust in both historical and religious contexts. Many programs held at our college Hillel, the Jewish organization, emphasized celebrating the lives of these people instead of focusing on their early and rather grotesque deaths. I feel as though your project fit right in with Jewish educational efforts and the amazing thing is that there were few to no Jewish people involved...which makes that even better perhaps in a time when groups try to deny this happened and accuse the Jewish people of manufacturing the idea of the Holocaust. I wish you a hearty mazel tov, congratulations, on the success of making your part of the world more tolerant and maybe when people hear your story and the story of the paper clip project, they will think twice about precipitating intolerance.

Sincerely,

Sara

To learn more, visit http://www.marionschools.org/holocaust/