This year’s Holocaust Education Week activities have concluded

We thank everyone for their continued support and participation and look forward to seeing you next year!

Remember the Past, Work for Peace

The Nova Scotia Holocaust Education Committee is holding its first Nova Scotia Holocaust Education Week from Nov. 1 to Nov. 9. The Week’s events are designed to promote tolerance and Holocaust education in the province’s schools.

The conference/week, recently amended by the Nova Scotian government, aims to promote more than Holocaust education, but also increase tolerance of minority groups and a sense of global justice amongst children, their families and members of the Cape Breton community. The gala banquet (Nov. 1) and educators workshop (Nov. 2) are featuring Linda Hooper, principal, Whitwell Middle School, and inspiration for the Emmy nominated documentary Paper Clips.  

“Rural areas do not generally have the resources for in-depth studies of global issues,” says Hooper. “It is my belief that, if everyone works on local problems, we can, together, create a world where respect, acceptance, and love become the rule and not the exception.”

Paper Clips follows Hooper as she encourages her students in Whitwell, Tennessee to collect six million paper clips to represent each of the lives lost  in the Holocaust. The project quickly snowballs, leading to the creation of the Children’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Nova Scotia Holocaust Education Committee aims to promote Holocaust education in all levels of the school system and the acceptance of minority groups across the province. The Holocaust Education Committee is funded in part by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, Canadian Federation of Teachers, Cape Breton County Economic Development Authority, Resource Recovery Funding Board and the Atlantic Jewish Council.

About Linda Hooper

Linda Hooper’s speech “The Power of One,” tells the moving story of how the students behind the Paper Clips Projectresponded to what had been to them a completely unfamiliar chapter in human history- the Holocaust. In 1998, the children of Tennessee’s Whitwell Middle School took on an extraordinary project inspired by their principal, Linda Hooper. The Paper Clips Project grew out of a sense that the students in the homogenous community weren’t learning about the lives and experiences of other groups.

Struggling to grasp the concept of six-million Holocaust victims, the students decided to collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of this crime against humanity. This amazing project would change the students, their teachers, their families and the entire town forever…and eventually, open hearts and minds around the world as this remarkable story became an award-winning film entitled PAPER CLIPS.

About Paper Clips and Both Sides of the Wire

Paper Clips trailer

As a part of their study of the Holocaust, the children of the Whitwell, TN Middle School try to collect 6 million paper clips representing the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

Both Sides of the Wire trailer

In addition to Paper Clips, the conference will also feature Both Sides of the Wire by Cape Breton filmmaker Neal Livingston.  The film chronicles the experiences of Austrian and German refugees, the majority of whom were Jewish, that had come to England to escape Nazi oppression, only then to be deported and interned in Canada as “dangerous enemy aliens.”

Mr. Livingston is slated to attend the event to present the film.