Council honors survivor for her support of Paper Clips

NJJN Staff Writer

Holocaust survivor Martha Rich will be honored for her contributions to Holocaust education by the MetroWest Holocaust Council on Thursday, May 26, at the Maurice Levin Theater-Leon and Toby Cooperman JCC Ross Family Campus, 760 Northfield Avenue, West Orange.

Rich, a resident of Short Hills, serves on the boards of several Holocaust organizations and is a frequent speaker at high schools and colleges.

Paper Clips is the award winning documentary that tells the story of students at the Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee who were learning about the Holocaust and had difficulty trying to conceptualize the unfathomable: the murder of six million Jews. To do so, they began to collect paper clips — they had been used by Norwegians during the war as a symbol of national unity and resistance against the Nazis. The students’ collection eventually grew to 11 million — one for every victim of the Nazis, including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses — and was eventually used to fill a World War II-era railroad boxcar from Germany, which stands as a permanent Holocaust memorial at the school.

Rich was instrumental in publicizing the Whitwell project, increasing public awareness of the school, attracting contributions, and widening its reputation in Holocaust education.

Linda Hooper, principal of the school and the inspiration for the Paper Clip project, will be the guest speaker for the MetroWest event. Hooper has described her school’s project as an affirmation of her belief that “education is absolutely essential to change, that evil must be battled by education. We must all study the past so that we do not forget nor repeat our mistakes and that there is a higher power guiding our destiny.”

Born in Mezokovesd, Hungary, Rich was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a fifteen-year-old student in 1944. After a transfer to a slave labor camp in Ollendorf, Germany, where she worked in a munitions factory, she was liberated by American forces in 1945. She remained in a displaced persons camp until immigrating to New York the following year. Since her retirement, Rich has devoted her time to communal work, serving on the boards of several Holocaust organizations.

Barbara Wind, director of the Holocaust Council, praised Rich for her tireless work on behalf of such programs in general and the Paper Clip project in particular. “Martha talks about the power of one, what one person can do either for good or for evil, and speaks on that in an effort to empower young listeners not to be bystanders, to stand up against bullies, bigotry, and prejudice,” Wind said.

A dinner reception begins at 6 p.m. with a screening of the documentary at 7:30.

Sponsorships for the program include Angel level at $360 (which includes dinner and theater tickets for two); Benefactor at $180 (dinner and theater ticket for one); and general admission at $18 (includes a dessert reception).

All proceeds from the dinner will go to establish the Martha Rich Holocaust Scholarship Fund.

For further information on the program to RSVP, please contact Jill Tekel at 973-929-3065, or jtekel@ujcnj.org.