A humble object, a profound lesson

At a time the nation is both at war and deeply divided, Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab’s wholly unexpected documentary “Paper Clips” arrives with an authentically persuasive message of hope: In the words of one of its children, “People can change the way they think about other people.” “Paper Clips” attests to the transforming and far-reaching power of a simple idea.

This endeavor initiated in 1998, with a remarkable individual, Linda Hooper, principal of the Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, Tenn., a onetime mining community with a population of 1,600 nestled in the Smoky Mountains some two-dozen miles northwest of Chattanooga -- and, as a Washington Post reporter would subsequently point out, about 25 miles from the site of the notorious 1925 Scopes Trial over the state’s constitutional ban on teaching evolution, and about 100 miles from a Ku Klux Klan headquarters. Noting that in her school of 425 students there were no Jews, Catholics or Asians, and only one Latino and five blacks, Hooper felt it was important that her pupils develop an awareness and appreciation of diversity.

Assistant principal -- and history teacher and football coach -- David Smith suggested to Hooper that the school study the Holocaust. Learning that 6 million Jews lost their lives, a student asked, “What is 6 million? I’ve never seen that before.” School administrators realized that it would help the students to comprehend the enormity of the number if they were to collect something. The students did some research and discovered that the citizens of Norway, where the paper clip was invented in 1899, wore paper clips on their lapels during World War II as a symbol of patriotism and resistance to the Nazis.

In no time students were writing presidents past and present and other public figures asking each for a paper clip. The student project came to the attention of German-born White House correspondents Peter Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand, who alerted other German colleagues. The Washington Post article followed, and Tom Brokaw reported on the Whitwell project on NBC News. Eventually, Whitwell Middle School would receive more than 29 million paper clips, including some from Germany attached to letters begging forgiveness, and 14 from a woman in memory of the 14 relatives she lost.

The project opened not only the students’ hearts and minds but also their teachers’. A contingent of Holocaust survivors came from New York to speak to the students, and the Schroeders combed Germany to find a cattle car that actually transported Jews to the camps and had it sent to Whitwell as a memorial. Throughout the film the familiar phrase “6 million Jews” is repeated over and over, as it has been in countless Holocaust documentaries.

But the Whitwell students and faculty place not only 6 million carefully selected paper clips and their attached letters for exhibition in the cattle car, but add 5 million more to remember homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs -- particularly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war -- physically and mentally disabled Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others who also lost their lives. It is this rare act of inclusiveness, which comes late in the film and is not otherwise remarked upon, that makes “Paper Clips” so special and encouraging.

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‘Paper Clips’

MPAA rating: G (general audiences)

Times guidelines: Suitable for all but the very young

A Miramax Films presentation of a Johnson Group of production in association with Ergo Entertainment. Directors Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab. Producers Joe Fab, Robert M. Johnson and Ari Daniel Pinchot. Executive producers Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Matthew Hiltzik, Jeffrey Tahler, Robert M. Johnson, Donny Epstein, Elie Landau, Yeeshai Gross. Written by Joe Fab. Cinematographer Julia Dixon Eddy. Music Charlie Barnett. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

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