he idea of using paper clips inthe design of museums is notnew. Eleven years ago students andteachers of the

U.S. Whitwell Middle School

began their school Paperclipproject. They wanted to educate stu-dents to make a difference in the worldof human rights; they used the Holo-caust as the theme for their lesson. Inthe Holocaust people were murderedbecause they were different fromthose in power. The project grew andnow the whole Whitwell communitynow has a museum in a railway carthat once transported victims to theirdeath. The predominantly white Chris-tian community in Whitwell MiddleSchool had the opportunity to learnabout the Holocaust from survivors,to hear their testimony, and to learnlessons from them for the next genera-tion.

Wayne MacIntyre

made a similarproject two years ago in

Herring Cove Junior High School in Halifax

. Hisidea was to

ﬁ

nd a symbolic way to talk about this horrible event. His environ-ment was also like Whitwell – a white,predominantly Christian communitywith few links to the Jews or the Ho-locaust. He expanded upon the Whit-well model. He created a Holocaustmuseum in his own classroom. Therewere displays on all four walls andoutside in the hallway. The centraldisplay was the 100 000 paper clipssuspended in chains from the ceiling;each paper clip respresentedone person from the Holo-caust. In this way, he helpedhis students understand themagnitude of the loss of life.

Our Croatian story isa little bit different.

WhileNorth America participatedin the Second World War bysending its soldiers to war,our region directly partici-pated in the war and in the Holocaust.Last summer I was a scholar of theCroatian Ministry of Education, Sci-ence and Sport. For twoweeks I participated in theInternational Institute forHolocaust Studies at

YadVashem

in Jerusalem. I se-lected a lecture by Mr. Ma-cIntyre because I was inter-ested in creative applicationsof knowledge about the Ho-locaust in teaching history.I immediately promised thatI would bring this project toCroatia.

There were many steps involved inmaking the project a reality. I had to de-sign the project in which I included thespeci

ﬁ

cs of Croatian history, the Holo-caust and some current world problems.So, I offered the project "

Study on Hu-man Rights based on the Holocaust

" toschool administration and students. It wasquite easy to animate Students becausethey are interested in topics that offer ashift away from traditional, daily schoolactivities. On the other side, for schooladministration it was important not tohave additional costs.

The general plan was to work with students on the topic of human rights, touse the Holocaust as an example of anextreme event that negated human rights,and then to bring more attention to cur-rent problems such as hunger, child labor and the use of child soldiers.

We startedthe project in September last year and weset the goal to open the museum with thepresentation of our work on InternationalHolocaust Remembrance Day on the 27thof January 2009. The main part of the mu-seum was 100,000 paperclips that repre-sented the victims of the Holocaust. Forour ambitious goal, we had less than

ﬁ

vemonths time and had to work very hard.

We began to collect paperclips atthe end of September. To attract moreattention to our action we started a we-blog, and Facebook group and we be-gan to issue (photocopy) our fanzine(news letter like this one). Studentswere interested in the project, and es-pecially delighted when they startedto receive the

ﬁ

rst envelopes with let-

First classroom holocaust museum in Croatia

No. 5 - 2009-4-27