B'nai B'rith International - The Global Voice of the Jewish Community

Student Paper Clip Project: Fastening Memories of Holocaust Fallen
By Rich Bindell

It's difficult to picture 6 million of anything. America's top athletes can earn salaries with astronomical numbers, but Sandra Roberts says they probably can't fathom what multiple millions truly mean. It is a rare occasion to see that many of anything in one place at one time, she notes.

Roberts is a teacher at Whitwell Middle School in tiny Whitwell, Tenn. In 1998, her eighth-graders in the town of some 1,600 were studying the Holocaust, part of an after-school program designed to teach tolerance and respect for cultural diversity and to demonstrate the negative effects of prejudice. Attendance was not mandatory, but, if a pupil volunteered, a parent was required to join in because of the nature of the issue.

Her students couldn't grasp the enormity of 6 million Jewish World War II deaths. To better comprehend the number of Jews who perished, the class asked Roberts and Whitwell Principal Linda Hooper if they could collect something to represent each life that was lost. Hooper asked them to choose something symbolic. They chose paper clips.

The students decided on paper clips because these items were ostensibly invented by a Jew in Norway. Since the Nazis forbade Norwegians from displaying any national symbol, they wore paper clips to bind together in solidarity. Paper clips on clothing became a protest against the Nazi occupation of their homeland.

The students started a letter-writing campaign, asking people, including celebrities, to mail them paper clips, along with explanations of their personal reasons for doing so.

At first, the project went virtually unnoticed. But, after receiving some publicity, the collection grew rapidly. The original goal was 6 million, but the eighth graders were soon inundated with so many paper clips, they decided to aim for 11 million, to represent not only the Jews killed but the 5 million others who perished at Nazi hands; they got that and much more.

A Monumental Effort

"In a six-week period, my students processed about 24 million paper clips," Roberts estimates. "That's about one half-million per day."

To date, more than 30 million paperclips have been sent to Whitwell Middle School, along with thousands of letters, documents, and artifacts, all of which were catalogued by the students.

Pupils counted the paper clips by hand. According to Roberts, they started collecting in the fall of 1999. By March 2001, they had more than 2.5 million paperclips. Shortly after, they received 24 million in six weeks, due to increased publicity.

Students would meet at the school at 5 a.m. for breakfast and hand-counting. They would open letters, dump the clips into a barrel, log in the letters by state and individual names, and count the clips by hand. This would continue until 6:30 a.m., when the children would break for school. After school, they would meet at families' houses and count until 5 p.m.

"People came in from the community to help us count," says Roberts. "I wouldn't even begin to estimate how many. But I think that it is safe to say that at least 75 percent of the community has been involved in one way or another."

The project has succeeded in making the abstract very real. "Trying to understand such a huge quantity would be difficult for anyone," Roberts explains, "even professional athletes who make millions of dollars for a single season. My students know that, to get to 11 million, it's one plus one, plus one plus one, etc."

An Unusual Venue

The Paper Clips Project's 11 million paper clips, each one representing a victim of the Nazis, are now displayed in the Children's Holocaust Memorial, an authentic German transport car surrounded by a small park on school grounds.

An additional 11 million paper clips were used to create a monument honoring children who died in Terezín, a fortress town in Czechoslovakia that housed Jews before they were sent to extermination camps. Many died there due to harsh conditions.

None of Whitwell's residents has a personal connection to the Holocaust. "Well, I believe we have one Jewish person in Whitwell," Roberts says. For Roberts and her students, though, the lack of personal connection is not important.

"The goal is about education and telling the story of this event in history. The U.S. made the promise-Never again will we stand idly by while populations are murdered-yet we still have Rwanda, Darfur, and Bosnia."

Since the establishment of the Children's Holocaust Museum, Roberts and her students have become rather popular. They have toured the United States, giving special presentations about the project. Their work is the subject of an HBO documentary film called "Paper Clips."

Dr. Steven Smiga, a Pittsburgh dentist and vice president of Bnai Brith International's (BBI's) AOV region, became familiar with the Paper Clips Project through an HBO program. Smiga's parents were both Holocaust survivors, so the program had a large impact on him. When Roberts was invited to come to Pittsburgh, he reached out to area schools, synagogues, churches, and even supermarkets to help promote her appearance.

"The documentary was so well-received that the community was well aware of the project. When I mentioned that she [Roberts] was coming, people were floored," Smiga says. "Whether you're Jewish or not, you want to listen to her [Roberts]. We made a tremendous impact in the community because of this program."

In September 2007, BBI invited Roberts and two of her students to Pittsburgh, Pa., to speak to audiences at Carnegie Mellon University and Beth El Congregation of the South Hills, as part of its Henry J. Goldstein B'nai B'rith Speaker Series. Hundreds of members of the community-Jews and non-Jews, students and non-students-came to screen the documentary and hear the inspirational story.

BBI Honorary President Joel S. Kaplan, who attended the event, praised Roberts' commitment to tolerance and diversity, and spoke about other B'nai B'rith programs, such as the Diverse Minds Youth Writing Challenge and Enlighten America, that promote similar essential messages to young people.

"Holocaust education has reached a level of importance greater than before, because we are down to the last remaining survivors," Kaplan says. "Therefore, after losing first-person accounts, I think the Paper Clips Project and programs like it will become an essential teaching tool, specifically for children."

Dedicated Students

Roberts gives all the credit to her students. "When an educated child stands up in front of a room full of adults, everyone will be silent and listen," she says.

Roberts works with 16 students and 16 parents at a time, and they work hard to stay involved with the project. They are required to log in 40 hours of Holocaust education and 24 hours of community service, including volunteering at their local churches, civic clubs, bible school, and local hospitals-for no credit. "They participate because they are interested," she says.

What do they do with the extra paper clips? "Every child leaves our school with six paper clips," says Roberts. "Their assignment is to pass five of them along to individuals they meet and spread the message."

More than 200 Whitwell students have participated in the project so far, connected to each other by a shared task, and bound to the victims whose stories they will continue to tell after those victims are all gone.