It's no surprise that Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., both have Holocaust memorials.
But most people wouldn't expect to find one in rural Whitwell, Tenn., a predominately Christian, two-traffic-light town with a population of 1,600 and no Jews.
Yet, a German railcar sits in the yard of Whitwell Middle School, housing The Children's Holocaust Memorial.
The story behind this memorial involves teachers who wanted to teach their students about diversity and intolerance; teenagers who were shocked by the atrocities of the Holocaust and sympathized with its victims; and a lot of paper clips.
The story begins in 1998, when David Smith, assistant principal of Whitwell Middle School, attended a teacher's conference in nearby Chattanooga, and was inspired to start a program to teach students about the Holocaust.
He brought up the idea to principal Linda Hooper, who then implemented an after-school Holocaust education class for eighth-graders. Language arts teacher Sandra Roberts was chosen to teach the class; 16 students enrolled.
"Our goal was to teach children what happens when intolerance reigns and when prejudice goes unchecked," Roberts says in the film.
The students read books, saw photographs and watched films about the Holocaust.
To visualize what "six million" looked like, a student suggested collecting six million of one object to help grasp the concept. After conducting research on the Internet, one student discovered that during the Holocaust, after the Nazis invaded Norway and began prosecuting Jews, non-Jewish Norwegians protested Nazis' forcing Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothing by wearing paper clips on their lapels.
Thus, the beginning of the Paper Clip Project.
