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The Paperclip Project
One School’s Fight Against Anti-Semitism, Became A World Wide Phenomenon
In 1998 in the small southeastern Tennessee town of Whitwell, a project began, the idea was to collect six million paperclips representing the lives of all the Jews who were lost in the Holocaust. The school a mostly white Anglo Saxton Christian school had a goal in mind, it was not only to open the eyes of the students to the horrors of the Holocaust but to teach them a lesson in diversity.
They decided on Paperclips because the students in their research had discovered that Norweigans had wore paperclips as a silent protest as well as a symbol of resistance against the Nazi Occupation during World War 2.
This Schools idea was a simple but effective one, which took on a life of its own. The idea eventually turned into a world wide phenomenon drawing international media attention and letters of support from literally every continent.
The students in a period of a few years would collect over 30 million paperclips, more than five times the number they had aimed for, often accompanying the…
