When Gladys Weiss of Monroe saw the documentary Paper Clips three years ago — about the efforts of middle-school children in a small rural Tennessee town to memorialize Holocaust victims — she felt an immediate need to help.

"I'm just amazed that more people don't know about this wonderful story," said Weiss.

The film describes the school's project in 1998 to collect six million paper clips to represent each Jew killed in the Shoa. The youngsters eventually collected 30 million paper clips, which now are on display in a Holocaust memorial at the school in Whitwell, a virtually all-white Protestant community. The memorial is housed in a German railcar used to transport victims to concentration camps.

Inspired by the students, Weiss has become a personal ambassador for the school and its memorial. Now she and her husband, Charles, are so eager to share the school's accomplishments with others they have organized a trip this fall to Whitwell through the Jewish Congregation of Concordia.

The Oct. 31-Nov. 4 trip will also include Shabbat services on Friday night and Saturday morning and a "mishpaha" [family] dinner with members of B'nai Zion Congregation in Chattanooga and their rabbi, Meir Goldstein. The 127-year-old synagogue, located 24 miles from Whitwell, is affiliated with the Conservative movement.

"It just astounds me the amount of people who don't know this story of the paper clips memorial," said Charles Weiss. "Wherever we go, we tell people. They need our support and our exposure."

In a related project of her own, Gladys Weiss uses paper clips of many colors to create necklaces that she sells locally, using the profits to spread the word about the Whitwell memorial.

Part of the profits have been used to purchase copies of the book about the Whitwell school's efforts, Six Million Paper Clips: The Making of a Children's Holocaust Memorial by Peter W. Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand.

"I bought hundreds of books and started to give them out to local clergy, libraries, and schools," said Gladys. "When some people from here went to Europe, I gave them necklaces and books to take and pass out there. When the kids go on their teen trips to Israel, I give them necklaces and books to take with them. I've given away more necklaces than I sell. I've sold a lot but I've given away close to 800."

Recently, while visiting the Jewish Museum in New York City, Weiss encountered a group of African-American students on a class trip to learn about the Shoa. She passed out the paper-clip necklaces while telling them about the Whitwell project.

Gladys also considers the necklaces a tribute to the Whitwell Middle School's principal, Linda Hooper, who initiated the project as a way to open her students' eyes to the world around them and the enormity of the Holocaust.

"We felt this woman deserved some cooperation and respect," said Weiss. "As soon as I saw the film, I began to think about what this Protestant woman had done and saw no reason why a nice Jewish woman like myself shouldn't help her."

Charles Weiss proudly noted that Cantor Eli Perlman, the Jewish Congregation of Concordia's religious leader, "never goes anywhere" without his paper clip necklace.

Those on the excursion will also have a guided glass-bottomed boat tour on the Lost Sea in Sweetwater, Tenn., America's largest underground lake, and a tour of the Gordon Lee Mansion in Chickamauga, Ga., the only structure to survive the Battle of Chickamauga during the Civil War.

Because the travelers will be taken door-to-door, those with physical limitations can be accommodated. The trip is open to others outside the Jewish Congregation of Concordia community. For more information, call 609-395-8137.