11,000,000 Paperclips: Whitwell’s Holocaust Memorial Bridges Race, Religion and Generations

Right now there is a good chance you have a paperclip in a pocket and probably don’t know it. Three hundred paperclips can fit in a box about the size of a big bar of soap. Take three thousand and you still have not filled a shoebox. That would take roughly five thousand to do that. But reach eleven million paperclips and that fills a nine foot by twenty five foot boxcar roughly twelve inches deep, with about a six foot area in the middle open for walking space.

Take another look at those numbers. The largest aviation accident in US history took place in Chicago, Illinois in May, 1979. That took less than three hundred lives. The September 11, 2001 attacks- a defining moment for this generation- left an official death toll of 2,975 people. Tennessee’s largest disaster, the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in the Memphis area claimed over, 5,100 people. No one disputes the devastation of those catastrophes, but in comparison, the Holocaust, some call it The Shoah, claimed about eleven million people. Six million were Jews plus another five million were considered inferiors or enemies of the Third Reich and demeaned not worthy to live. Eleven million paper clips make for an impressive display.  More impressive, however, is the way a small East Tennessee community has used those paperclips to break down barriers among race, religion and age for an unforgettable monument to the respect for humanity. It started in 1998.

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The story was told in a 2003 documentary film, Paperclips, about the town of Whitwell (approximately 1,700 people – 2010 Census) northeast of Chattanooga in Rhea County. In the Middle School in was studying the Holocaust and was hearing the often repeated phrase “Six million Jews” dying or murdered in the concentration camps.

What does six million look like? Intellectually we know it is a lot of people – that was about the population of Tennessee at the time- but it is still hard to grasp such a large number. Imagine getting six million of something that can be seen in one place and could be obtained easily. Enter the humble paperclip.

Well, not so humble. In Norway during World War II and era of the Third Reich, the paper clip became a symbol in Norway of those resisting the Adolph Hitler regime. Six million paperclips could be collected for a visual representation of one of the world’s darkest moments.

Could children born in the mid 1980’s take to a project that was so far removed from them by time? Most of the teachers were of the baby boom and generation X and too young to remember the holocaust era, but still had parents and grandparents who remember World War II. Would a largely white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant community get behind this?

The answer to those questions was “yes” and “yes.” That being a Yes written in big, bold letters, capitalized and underlined twice.

They started on their quest. And eventually national media picked up on this little town taking on a huge project. NBC News reported on the project in April, 2001. It took on a life of its own or, as they would  have said today, “went viral.” Paperclips came in from all over the world, and so did visitors.

Holocaust survivors came and told their stories to the students and the town. They were impressed by local’s sincerity. Six million were surpassed and the paperclips kept coming in. Linda Hooper was principal at the time. “We stopped counting the paper clips at thirty million,” she remembers. The collection no longer remembers just the Jews killed in those days but also the others who went to their deaths as one killed for being Jewish was just as dead as one who was handicapped, homosexual, gypsy or a pure blooded German who spoke out against the Third Reich.

Railroad boxcars transported prisoners to the camps. Even modern images of the death camps show train tracks entering places like Auschwitz. If one of those old boxcars still existed it would be a perfect place to display the paperclips. A boxcar was located in a railroad museum in Germany that was built in 1917. It was probably used for transporting roughly one hundred prisoners at a time that would have given each person roughly 2 ¼ square feet each in a windowless car with no climate control or bathroom facilities.

November 9, 2001 the memorial was dedicated as the Children’s Holocaust Memorial. Visitors could now walk through the one-time death car to see the collection of paperclips and see what eleven million looks like.

It is a decade later. The middle school kids of 1998-2001 are now adults in their mid to late twenties. A roof was built to keep the Tennessee rains and sun off the 95-year-old boxcar. Linda Hooper, who was the principal for sixteen and a half years, retired as principal two years ago. “I love it.  I can do what I want to pretty much,” she says today in a phone interview. And she is doing just that – she is the volunteer curator for the Children’s Holocaust Memorial.

“We have a lot of visitors and its given people a lot of pride in the community,” she says. “Our folks really get excited in some of the things their kids can be involved in.”

“We have had people visit from six of the seven continents. We have not had people visit from Antarctica,” she says. “But we have had mail from Antarctica.”

On Fridays Whitwell Middle School students give tours. All the other days a key is available to visit between 8 am and 7 pm.  “I am surprised by the number of people who come to see it. We only take sixty people for our student led tours and they are booked every Friday,” she says. People have left notes, yamakas, books and, of course, paperclips. “People are amazed to find something like this in the Rural South and we are amazed they are amazed!”

Today’s students at Whitwell were babies or not born when the Holocast project began, but the legacy continues. They are involved in a project, one million bones, where students make bones to illustrate and bring awareness to modern genocide. It is a project going on throughout the nation.

Driving from Chattanooga there is the Whitwell exit about where the time zone changes. I head north about ten miles through a valley into the little town. I stop at Smith Brothers Grocery and get a key.  Cynics take note- there is no charge for admission so this is no creative way for the school (or anyone else ) to make money.

Headed west on a country road, I make a left where the road ends, then find Whitwell Middle School and the boxcar. I try to imagine the car as a transport for people. I try, but cannot, imagine the thoughts, the sounds and the feelings that must have been in that boxcar among those going from home to an unknown destination.

It is hard, even seeing all those paperclips to grasp eleven million people murdered. During the twentieth century it was estimated wars killed 31 million people. But another 169 million people were killed by their own governments or by others in purges of other races, religions or ethnicities. But when  a new century opened a little town in the Sequatchie River valley challenged the world to do better.