Paper Clips

North Hollywood, California - I turned on the television this morning hoping to catch a good movie on cable to watch while I did laundry and other errands, and something called "Paper Clips" on HBO caught my eye. The summary told me it was a documentary about a middle school class in Whitwell, Tennessee and a project they did about the holocaust. I'll watch just about any documentary, but throw in the words "Tennessee" and "Holocaust" and you've got my attention. I had no idea what I was in for.

It started as a class project to teach these kids in a school with five black students, one Hispanic, and no Jews about tolerance. They studied the Holocaust, something which most of them knew nothing about, and in trying to comprehend the enormity of the number of Jews that were killed, 0ne student asked "What's six million? I've never seen that before." In order to help quantify what that number meant, the class decided to try and collect six million of something, and they set off looking for something that could symbolize the holocaust. In doing some research on the internet, one student discovered that in Norway, where the paper clip was invented, citizens wore paper clips on their lapels as a sign of patriotism and resistance to the Nazis during WWII. Building on this theme, the class decided to write letters to Jews, actors, celebrities, and politicians all over the world in the hopes of getting them to send paper clips to the school as a symbol of tolerance. Their goal was six million, they ended up with 29 million.

Eventually they were also given an authentic cattle car used by the Nazis to haul people to concentration camps, and they built a memorial using the car to house 11 million of the paper clips; one for every Jew, Gypsy, homosexual, Jehovah's Witness, and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

Now, I'll tear up at a sad commercial. Put on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and you better make sure I have a box of Kleenex handy. Show me a documentary about middle school kids from Tennessee building a Holocaust memorial? Open the floodgates. Not exactly the way I had planned to start my Friday, but I'm glad I watched it. And now I have a new stop on my trip: Whitwell, Tennessee.