Resistance by Paper Clip

                I recently watched a documentary called Paper Clips which follows the project of Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee as they attempt to understand what the number ‘six million’ looked like as they studied the Holocaust during World War II.  So they began collecting paper clips as a way to get a better understanding for the number.  The students of Whitwell Middle School used the paper clip as their symbol to collect due to its already symbolic nature.  It was created during World War II by a Norwegian by the name of Johan Vaaler.  It was created as a sign of unity, and was used as a form of silent resistance against the Nazi regime that had begun occupation of Norway.  Since publicly speaking out against the occupational government was illegal, this was a safer way to express the citizens’ discontent.

The project started off slow, but with the help of a pair of news reporters by the names of Peter and Dagmar Schroeder who wrote several articles and even an entire book on the middle school project.  The book was entitled Das Büroklammer-Projekt (The Paper Clip Project), and helped to spread the news of the project to other countries such as Germany.  In addition to the website that the students created, a Washington Post article written by Dita Smith helped to bring the news of what middle school students were doing to combat the hatred and intolerance that had built up since the Holocaust.

                Due to the spread of the project, paper clips began flowing in from all over the world to help the Whitwell Middle School classes reach their goal of six million.  Instead of reaching their six million goal, paper clips continued flowing into the school until the total reached upwards of twenty four million paper clips.  After contributions from a school in Germany which filled a suitcase with paper clips with notes attached to them which apologized to Anne Frank, the students began working on a memorial to commit to the people who were killed during the Holocaust.

                The memorial consisted of an actual German railcar that was used to transport the souls to the concentration camps where they would be either worked to death, die of malnutrition, or gassed by the Nazis.  The two German reporters (Peter and Dagmar Schroeder) personally searched for this car and transported it to the school.  By this time, the students’ collection had totaled out at over 24 million paper clips.

                When the project was finished, and the memorial built, the railcar contained eleven million paper clips, six million which symbolized the Jews who were murdered and five million more clips to symbolize the Gypsies, Catholics, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others that were murdered along with them.  The centerpiece of the memorial was the suitcase, opened and sitting on a pile of paper clips.  The memorial was set up by the students and volunteers from around the town, and a path was set up to lead to the railcar.  Eighteen butterflies were embedded in the cement path to symbolize a poem that was written by a child in the concentration camps called “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”.  Eighteen means ‘life’ in Gematria, further pushing the memorial’s significance in the fight against hatred and intolerance, telling those who died that they were not forgotten and never will be.