Saturday, August 12, 2006

paper clips


Almost every Friday night, Beth, Michaela (10), Skye (8), and Alia (6), and I have "Family Movie Night." Tonight we decided to watch Paper Clips, a movie about what happened when in 1998 a Whitwell, TN middle school decided to collect one paper clip for every one of the six million souls that lost their lives in the Holocaust. This exclusively Protestant and almost entirely white community wished to learn about tolerance and diversity.

In October of 2001, the school was able to put 11 million paperclips (now including other groups killed by the Third Reich) in a railcar that they had found and arranged to have shipped to the US that became part of a memorial at the school.

The material was too old for Li-Li and a challenge for Skye, but Chaela and I sat thru the whole thing (Beth left with Alia).

It's a wonderful, wonderful deeply moving documentary and I highly recommend it.

3 comments:

Joe said...

saw the trailer...WOW!

as a former school teacher, I can't tell you how many "good" idea ran through my mind...doing a good idea is another matter entirely.

excellent stuff!

total respect!

humbling!

Charissa said...

I saw this movie, too... and absolutely LOVED it. Glad you had the kids watching it - it's very moving.

My review...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the review, I just added this title to my movie queue. :)