Paper Clips Project
The Paper Clips Project is celebrated in the 2004 documentary, "Paper Clips" (film), Paper Clips Project
Johan Vaaler's fame as the paper clip inventor has spread worldwide, especially in the United States. When eighth-graders at Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee were to learn about the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, one teacher had the idea of illustrating that mind-boggling number by collecting as many small and cheap objects—this was called the Paper Clips Project. According to one website, the paper clip was chosen "after they learned (that) Norwegians wore them on their clothes to show support for Jews during World War II". Another site elaborates this story even further: "That symbol of resistance originally honored Johann Vaaler, the Norwegian Jew who invented the paper clip". Both of these statements are false. Vaaler was not a Jew, he did not invent the common paper clip, and Norwegians who wore them did not do so to protest the tragic fate of the Jews, but to show national concord and solidarity, and opposition to the German occupation and local Nazi authorities. But the project was a success — far more than the required 6 million clips were collected.
During promotion of the film that documents the middle school project, the film's promoters contacted and partnered with Baumgarten's Office Products in Atlanta, Georgia. Baumgarten's is the company that manufactures Plastiklips and other fastening devices; they constructed displays made of green plastic paper clips shaped into the Star of David to assist with the film's promotion at theaters around the United States. Hans Baumgarten, Baumgarten's treasurer and his family of Jewish descent, left Nazi Germany, avoiding death camps.
Baumgarten's Plastiklip was invented by the German Kurt Lorber, who has been a partner with Baumgarten's since World War II.
Paper Clip Project was expanded by Wayne McIntyre in Canada and by Miljenko Hajdarovic in Croatia.
Read more about this topic: Paper Clip
Famous quotes containing the words paper and/or project:
“It is hard to believe that England is so near as from your letters it appears; and that this identical piece of paper has lately come all the way from there hither, begrimed with the English dust which made you hesitate to use it; from England, which is only historical fairyland to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I wish to come to know you get to know you all
Let your belief in me and me in you stand tall
Just like a project of which no one tells
Or do ya still think that I’m somebody else?”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)