Paper Clips

Back in 1998, when students at a middle school in Tennessee were studying the Holocaust and reading about the murder of six million Jews, they asked the question: What does six million look like?

Here's what happened next:

...they decided it would help if they could actually see six million of something. They needed something small and ended up settling on paper clips, partially because their research revealed that Norwegians had expressed their opposition to the Nazi roundup of Jews by wearing paper clips on their lapels. The kids wrote letters to friends and to celebrities—movie stars, former presidents— asking for paper clips. Tom Hanks, Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush were among those who replied.

The project started with a bang, and soon the children had collected 150,000 paper clips. Then, nothing. Only when two D.C.-based German reporters, Peter and Dagmar Schroeder, heard about the project and visited Whitwell did the project really take off. The Washington Post and NBC News picked up the story, and soon the students were flooded with paper clips from all over the world. Along with the contributions came emotional letters from Holocaust survivors, those who had lost family members, and just regular people who were touched and inspired by what the students were doing. A group of Holocaust survivors from New York journeyed to Whitwell to share their stories with the kids. The project was carried over from one year to the next, as each new incoming class of eighth graders picked up where the previous class had left off.

Eventually, 29 million paper clips were collected.

A film about the project, entitled Paper Clips, has just been released by Miramax. Here's a trailer for the film, along with a synopsis.

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