Paperclips
It ended up a huge project that gained national attention, so they actually received far more paperclips than they needed. They also got all kinds of letters from survivors and descendents of survivors. Several survivors came out to visit. The school obtained an actual German boxcar used to transport Jews to concentration camps in which to house the paperclips in a memorial. They decided to go with the overall total of those killed in concentration camps and included eleven million paperclips in the final product. All this in a town with no Jews, a town right in between the one where the Scopes Monkey Trial was held and another where the KKK was founded. It’s a great DVD to watch with your kid.
I’m teaching Night by Elie Wiesel next year. I haven’t taught it in a long time. One year, back in the 80's or early 90's, I think, an exhibit had opened at the Denver Jewish Heritage Center. It was a collection of black and white portraits of survivors as they are today, looking healthy, if aged, not the emaciated faces we usually associate with the holocaust. I offered extra credit to students if they went and wrote a one-page response.
It’s something—somehow, it’s often the kids who are failing that create the stories you tell later in your career. A boy went to the exhibit, and an elderly man approached him, asking if the boy was Jewish. The kid said no and sheepishly explained that he was flunking English and that he had come for the extra credit because we were studying the book Night. The man nodded, then said that it was very important that this boy and his generation read such stories, because “someday we will no longer be around to tell them ourselves.” Rolling up his sleeve, he showed my student the faded number tattooed on his arm. The kid stayed and talked to him for a long time and wrote a pretty damned good paper. I rather imagine that the experience stuck with him long after he graduated. (And no, he didn’t pass my class, but he did graduate, and I like to think that he still learned something important, even if I couldn’t get the reading and writing to stick.)
Amazing, isn’t it, that such powerful stories can happen and be told, and yet we cannot seem to truly love one another? At least, not on anywhere near the scale at which we can destroy one another. What would happen if the world decided that the final solution was to systematically save six million people’s lives from poverty and disease? What if, what the heck, they decided to save an additional five million? With six billion of us among whom to spread the work, how hard could it be? I have to agree with Anne Frank. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world.”
I had a college professor who was a camp survivor and I remember seeing the
number on his arm.
Along those lines, W--I remember standing in Anne's Frank's hideout,
looking at the marks on the wall where the growth of children hiding there
had been tracked, just as we tracked my son's on the pantry door at home,
and crying. It didn't help that, at the time, I was pregnant with what
ultra-sound indicated was probably a girl. I couldn't imagine eight people
living in those cramped rooms for two years.
I loved Night. It still sticks with me. I was just thinking recently that
I would like to re-read it.
The quote is wonderful, Paula. One of the best things about Middle Son's
education at the hands of order priests (Marist and Jesuit) was the
wonderful religious education he's received. In high school he took classes
with names like World Religions, Hebrew Studies and Holocaust Studies and
it will stick with him for life. Great post.
I was much moved by this blog entry Paula, and have told a personal story
relating to your blog. Its a little too long to put in a comment box so I
will take the liberty of putting the URL so others can see it.
Your blog was so well written that I had a very visceral response to it.
That is what any good writer should do, after all its not just
entertainment.
Thank you, JWL, for the kind words and the sharing. I found your story
very moving, as well. What a tribute to the human spirit.
This post is so important. I loved reading Anne Frank's book over and over.
The Holocaust Museum in DC is also a good museum to visit if you haven't
visited it yet.
Hi, my name is Amber, and I just happened to stumble upon your blog.
The truly remarkable thing about this was that the kids were working with a
completely foreign culture. There are no Jews in this town. The other
thing is that it takes place in a region we so often identify with
prejudice--the rural South.