TROY News Center

Troy University students on Tuesday were challenged to consider their own legacy by the teacher who leads an after-school program at a Tennessee middle school that gained national attention for its lasting tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.

Sandra Roberts, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Whitwell (Tenn.) Middle School, was on the Troy Campus on Tuesday to discuss “The Paperclip Project,” which began in 1998 as an after-school study program to examine the Holocaust. Roberts delivered lectures to area middle school students during the morning and to TROY students, faculty and staff on Tuesday afternoon. A public lecture was scheduled for the Johnson Center for the Arts in downtown Troy Tuesday night.

“You are the future leaders of this community, your home communities or other communities around our country,” Roberts told the audience gathered in the Trojan Center Theatre. “What will your legacy be? What will people say that you champion? What is it that you are passionate about? In your lifetime, we will lose the last Holocaust survivor. What happens then? Will there stories be lost or will we remember and choose to honor their legacies through our own lives?”

In an effort to quantify the number of victims of the Holocaust in a manner in which the students could understand, the after-school group began collecting paper clips, a symbol commonly worn by Norwegians as a silent protest against Nazi occupation during World War II. At the end of the first year of the program, 752,000 paper clips had been collected.

“By the fall of 2000 we had received several large packages, and then the paper clips just stopped coming in,” Roberts said.

That all changed when the program received national media attention, first from NBC Nightly News and then from both the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.

“The article ran in the Boston Globe on the first day of Passover. The next week was our spring break,” Roberts said. “The principal called me the first night of spring break and told me to come to the school. When I arrived we went to the cafeteria and every table was stacked up with letters and packages containing paper clips. For the next six weeks, the Post Office was no longer able to deliver our mail.”

The students began meeting before school to read the letters and count and categorize the paper clips. The project began receiving half a million paper clips daily, Roberts said.

“As a teacher, the whole time I wondered if the students really got the purpose of the program and the meaning behind the paper clips,” she said. “Then one morning I came in and one of our students was sitting off in the corner with a paper clip in her hand, just turning it over and over. When I asked what was wrong, she said that her mother, who had cancer, had just received a treatment and had a rough night. She then held up the paper clip, turned to me and said, ‘What if this one person knew or would discover the cure for breast cancer and yet died all because of hatred.’ At that point I knew that she had truly learned the impact that hatred can have.”

Roberts’ lectures will continue on Wednesday in Dothan where she will lecture to area school children Wednesday morning. A public lecture and reception will be held at 4 p.m. in the Sony Hall auditorium inside the Library/Technology Building on TROY’s Dothan Campus. Roberts also will deliver the public presentation “Learning from the Holocaust” at Temple Emanu-El in Dothan at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 23. The event is free and open to the public.

Roberts will deliver her presentation to students, faculty and the public in Montgomery on Jan. 24 beginning at 6 p.m. in the Rosa Parks Museum Auditorium. Earlier that day, she will also lecture to Montgomery area middle school students.

A project designed to stress the importance of tolerance and respect for different cultures at a Tennessee middle school will be the topic of a series of lectures at Troy University Jan. 22-24 as a part of the University’s “Year of Holocaust Remembrance” activities.

Sandra Roberts, the eighth-grade language arts at Whitwell (Tenn.) Middle School, will discuss “The Paperclip Project,” which began in 1998 as an after-school study program to examine the Holocaust, during lectures at the Troy, Dothan and Montgomery campuses.

The lectures are co-sponsored by Troy University, the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center, One Clip at a Time, the Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center, Temple Emanu-El in Dothan and Troy University’s College of Communication and Fine Arts.

The paperclip became the focus of the project when students discovered that Joseph Valler, a Norwegian Jew, was credited as having invented the paper clip and that Norwegians commonly wore them on their lapels as a silent protest against Nazi occupation during World War II. The initial goal was to collect six million paper clips, one for each of the victims of the Holocaust victims.

Students began bringing paperclips to school and then established a website to bolster their collection efforts. The students soon began to receive not only paperclips but also countless letters and documents relating to the Holocaust. To date, the students in Whitwell have collected more than 30 million paperclips and more than 30,000 letters from all 50 states, more than 50 foreign countries and from all seven continents.

The project was the topic of the award-winning documentary, “Paper Clips,” by Miramax Films in 2004.

Roberts will lecture to middle school students in the Claudia Crosby Theater on the Troy Campus beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 22. A lecture for Troy University students and the public will be presented at 1 p.m. in the Trojan Center Theatre, followed by a community reception at 5 p.m. and a gallery lecture, “Learning from the Holocaust,” at 5:30 p.m. at the Johnson Center for the Arts on East Walnut Street in downtown Troy. All of Tuesday’s events are free and open to the public.

On Jan. 23, Roberts will speak with students from Dothan City schools beginning at 9:30 a.m. A public lecture and reception will be held at 4 p.m. in the Sony Hall auditorium inside the Library/Technology Building on TROY’s Dothan Campus. Roberts also will deliver the public presentation “Learning from the Holocaust” at Temple Emanu-El in Dothan at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 23. The event is free and open to the public.

Roberts will deliver her presentation to students, faculty and the public in Montgomery on Jan. 24 beginning at 6 p.m. in the Rosa Parks Museum Auditorium. Earlier that day, she will also lecture to Montgomery area middle school students.

For more information about the lectures or the Year of Holocaust Remembrance, contact the Office of Sponsored Programs at (334) 670-3102.