November 15, 2008

Local school project helps students visualize horrific human toll of Holocaust

http://bdtonline.com/local/local_story_320185814.html

PETERSTOWN — What does six million of anything look like? History shows that six million Jews and five million other minorities died during the Holocaust in World War II, but how can anyone truly grasp the significance of that number? One Monroe County school is creating a way to help students visualize the human toll.

The seventh-grade at Peterstown Middle School is collecting pennies to represent each victim of the Holocaust, said teacher Tania Gravely. Every penny contributed to the project will represent one person.

“At the beginning of school this year I began a mini-series with my students against bullying in the schools, and we talked about prejudices and discrimination,” Gravely said.

As the discussions about discrimination continued, the class began to explore the history of the Holocaust and how the Nazi targeted Jews for harassment and then extermination. Then the class watched “Paper Clips,” a video about a Tennessee school that collected a paper clip for every person slain in the Holocaust.

The Tennessee effort inspired the Peterstown students to try a similar project, only this time with pennies.

“We started out really low, with about 25,000,” Gravely said. “We planned to give them to a local charity. Then my superintendent Dr. (Lyn) Guy came down and said, ‘Oh,, now let’s go big on this.’ So we have started sending letters out to businesses and expanding that, too, as we go along. This is a student-run project. They send the letters out, they count the pennies, they document it, they write the articles.”

As of Thursday, Nov. 13, the seventh-grade students had collected 152,849 pennies.

“We started the project on Oct. 6, and right now we are storing the pennies in bottles the Sweet Springs Water Company donated so kids can visualize what it looks like for this many people to be killed. If they get to six million or even a half million, they will be able to visualize what can happen with prejudices and hate,” Gravely said.

Students have placed donation cans in area stores, plus other monetary donations are being accepted. Money from change other than pennies, cash and checks are converted into pennies.

“We are asking the public to assist us in collecting this total,” Gravely said.

“Our plans are to fund a field trip for the students to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and to support additional community projects,” she said.