2008 Annual Institute Keynote Address

No substitute for tolerance

Whitwell Middle School principal and students to share paper clip story

We did what we had to do. We try to honor the dead and tell the world that there is no substitute for tolerance. Are you listening? Please come to Whitwell and see for yourself.
                                                                                       —the students of Whitwell Middle School*

In a small town in Tennessee sits a German railcar, built in 1917, that once carried Jewish victims of the Holocaust to concentration, work and death camps. The car houses eleven million paper clips, one for each victim of the Holocaust.

How did this railcar—today reconceived as a memorial to victims of the Holocaust—come to be in Whitwell, a small southern town with a predominantly white, Protestant population?  The answer lies in a story that was shared in the 2004 documentary film Paper Clips.

Whitwell Middle School principal Linda Hooper started a project that used the Holocaust to teach her students the importance of tolerating and respecting different cultures. The students found themselves overwhelmed by the concept of six million Jewish victims.

When one of the students suggested that they collect six million paper clips to help them understand the magnitude of the Holocaust, the students began a quest for donations of paper clips. They also asked people to share thoughts and stories of the Holocaust. By the end of that first school year, 700,000 paper clips had arrived at the school, along with several hundred documents and letters. The students’ interest in honoring Holocaust victims gained national and international attention.

At the 2008 Brushy Fork Annual Institute, Linda Hooper and some of her students will share the inspirational story of how something the size of a paper clip expanded to affect their entire community and the world beyond.

* Student quote is from the book, Six Million Paper Clips: The Making of a Children’s Holocaust Memorial by Peter W. Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder Hildebrand.