Tennessee VI

As I was driving out of Whitwell I saw a small sign which read Children's Holocaust Museum with an arrow pointing to the right. I followed the signs and soon discovered Whitwell Middle School.

It seems that the school wanted to help students understand the sheer magnitude of the Holocaust. Taking the Norwegian symbol of resistance, the paperclip which was invented in Norway, the students decided to try to collect 11,000,000. One for each of those murdered by the Nazis. In one of the photos, you can see 11,000,000 of the over 30,000,000 clips collected by the students. These are on display inside the rail car. Also, the suitcase is filled with letters from German children apologizing to Anne Frank. In addition, as word spread about the project, documents and letters began to arrive at the school. Today, the school has designated a special library to the project which contains over 33,000 documents and letters received.

The box car was actually used to transport Jews and other prisoners to the camps. It was donated by German White House correspondents to the school when they learned of the project. The car was used for many things before and after the war including appearances in movies about the war.

Their story was made into an award winning documentary called Paper Clips which can be purchased from the school.

Here is a link to what Wikipedia has to say about the project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Clips_Project

And here is the Whitwell Middle School site;

www.whitwellmiddleschool.org/

I realize that this post is not about Vietnam, but I think that it is related because it is about people's desire for freedom and mankind's responsibilities to each other.

The next post will be the last from Tennessee and again not specifically about 'Nam, but I hope you will find it interesting, anyway.

Tennessee V

While at breakfast with the guys from Soddy Daisy, one of them asked me if I had seen the memorial over in Dunlap? One of things I love about this journey is that this seems to happen on every trip! Someone tells me about a site I have never heard of before. Assured that Dunlap was only about 20 miles away, I set out to see what was there.

When I arrived all I could find was the beginnings of a Veteran's Memorial, still under construction. (top pic) I stopped at a local National Guard Amory and the good folks there assured me that what I had seen was in fact the new memorial, not yet completed. One of them said, "Have you seen the one in Whitwell?" "It's only about 20 miles from here!"

Somewhat amazed, I set out again and this time found this great park.

On my next post I will show some other pics from Tennessee that I think you might find interesting, too.