This entrancing documentary details the story of how the students of Whitwell Middle School, a little town in Central Tennessee, started with a school assignment that snowballed into a one-of-a-kind Holocaust memorial gaining world-wide attention.
Whitwell is a former coal mining town with only a handful of minorities. The small town is almost totally Christian. Faculty at the school wanted to teach their children about the Holocaust as a means of showing them how intolerance of others can be fatal.
To give them a visual idea of what six million looks like (the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust), students began collecting paper clips. As news of the project began to spread, paper clips began pouring into the little school. Students did research and projects. They began to understand the not everybody was just like them. Jewish Holocaust survivors came to the school to share their stories and were embraced by the community.
Today a rail car formerly used to transport Jews to concentrations camps houses the paper clip collection on the grounds of Whitwell Middle School. Students give tours for other schools and answer questions.
This story is told with grace, humor and sensitivity. It will give you renewed hope in today's youth and an understanding of how the Holocaust must never be forgotten, lest it be repeated.
Whitwell is a former coal mining town with only a handful of minorities. The small town is almost totally Christian. Faculty at the school wanted to teach their children about the Holocaust as a means of showing them how intolerance of others can be fatal.
To give them a visual idea of what six million looks like (the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust), students began collecting paper clips. As news of the project began to spread, paper clips began pouring into the little school. Students did research and projects. They began to understand the not everybody was just like them. Jewish Holocaust survivors came to the school to share their stories and were embraced by the community.
Today a rail car formerly used to transport Jews to concentrations camps houses the paper clip collection on the grounds of Whitwell Middle School. Students give tours for other schools and answer questions.
This story is told with grace, humor and sensitivity. It will give you renewed hope in today's youth and an understanding of how the Holocaust must never be forgotten, lest it be repeated.