Paper Clips..

Symbol represents the philosophy behind a particular act. Symbol represents objectives of specific institute or community. Once you understand the thought stream hidden behind a symbol, you will never look at that symbol the same way, you used to do before.. Symbols make us think !!

Same thing has happened to me, since I watched the documentary Paper Clips.

Paper Clips is a Holocaust project carried out by eighth graders from a small town in Tennessee. School teachers told the students abt Holocaust, Hitler and death of 6 million Jews (overall 11 million) in concentration camps. The number 6 million was somewhat difficult for students to understand, so they came up with an idea of collecting paper clips as a representative for every life lost in the concentration camp.. The reason for using the symbol "Paper clip" was because Norwegian patriots used to protest against the king by wearing paper clips. The clips were meant to denote "we are bound together".

So these students started writing to various celebrities, authors, politicians etc and they received responses in terms of paper clips.. When students started counting these paper clips one by one, they began to understand the enormity of holocaust. Initially the project was focused for students, but over the period it absorbed the whole community. In fact the news about the project reached all over the world. People started contributing to project by sending "a paper clip" as representative for their closer ones, who died in concentration camp..

Few concentration camp survivors visited this school to spend some time with these students and share their memories. It gave whole new insight into the "Cold", "Calculated", "Extermination" of Jews by Nazis in concentration camps.

Overall, students received 24 million paper clips. As a memorial, the school hosted 11 million paper clips in a railcar, which was being used during WW-II to carry Jews/prisoners to concentration camp.

Initially the project started with an objective of "Understanding Holocaust", but finally it turned out to be a project of "Love, Humanity and Freedom".

A Paper Clip.. A Symbol.. !!