I saw a well-produced documentary a couple of weeks ago called "Paper Clips". It's about these middle school students in some southeastern state. They were learning about the Holocaust and the teacher wanted some way to bring home the feeling of just how many Jews were killed. So they were going to assemble a large pile of small objects.
At some point they hit upon the idea of paper clips. They explain that paper clips were invented by a Norwegian Jew, and that during WW2 Norwegians wore paper clips on their clothing to show their sympathy with Jews. It makes a briliant fit, but it isn't true. On Wikipedia of all places, I found this: "Johan Vaaler's fame as the paper clip inventor has spread world-wide, especially in the United States. In spite of recent findings by Henry Petroski and others, many websites still present this piece of misinformation. The myth has also ramified. When eighth-graders at Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee were to learn about the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, one teacher had the good idea of illustrating that mind-boggling number by collecting as many small and cheap objects. 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". None of these statements are true. 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 loyalty to the King and the Government. But the project was a success -- far more than the required 6 million clips were collected." I think we ought to hold documentary makers to the same journalistic standard as we do Wikipedia. -todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
