Paper Clips-One clip at a time

On Friday morning, the documentary Paper Clips was shown to the Ukrainian students to end the week of teaching on diversity, tolerance, and love. The documentary follows a class of 8th graders in Tennessee studying the Holocaust who collected paper clips to make a chain that would represent the 6 million Jews that were killed. As a result of this project, 25 million paper clips were received and the students received letters of testimony worldwide. Some of the survivors spoke to the town to share their stories and in honor of the students. The project impacted the teachers, students, and community in developing their own tolerance. German journalists adopted the project and arranged a railroad card from one of their former concentration camps to come to Tennessee and it is now a museum on the Holocaust. The Ukrainian teachers commented that it was a beautiful and moving story, which they will add to their own stories of the Holocaust.

After the movie, the Ukrainian teachers thanked the American teachers for taking the time to teach their students. It was very sad for us all to say good bye to the Ukrainians and vice versa.