During World War II, Norwegians, in a simple act of protest against the Nazi regime and as a way of demonstrating sympathy for Hitler’s victims, began to wear paper clips in their labels. In 1998, three middle school teachers in Tennessee came up with a project for their eighth grade students to study the Holocaust as a way to foster understanding and tolerance. When one student said it was impossible to imagine six million of anything, much less the six million Jews who died during that period, a project to collect paper clips to represent each one of the victims was born.
In 2001, the Paper Clip Project culminated in a unique memorial that changed the lives of those who created it as well as touching Holocaust survivors and countless communities. The third in a series of documentaries sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Forest Park National Bank and Trust Co., Paper Clips follows the project which started slowly at first and, after national publicity, gained momentum. It also shows how in the process the students change, the teachers change and the people in this small Southern community change. The film will be shown on Saturday, April 22 at 2 p.m. in the Austin Room of the Forest Park Library.
“Submitted by the Friends of the Library
