Jewish bikers pay tribute to rural school's Holocaust memorial

WHITWELL, Tenn. -- Students at a rural Tennessee school where a lesson in social tolerance, diversity and stereotypes grew into a children's Holocaust memorial celebrated a cultural exchange with hundreds of Jewish bikers who visited Friday.

Jewish bikers?

"Let's face it. Stereotypes are grounded in some element of truth but it's an exaggeration," said Jeff Mustard, founder of the King David Bikers of Pompano Beach, Fla., and organizer of the Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance visit to Whitwell Middle School.

"At the end of the day we are doing charity work and doing good stuff...dispelling the myths of Jewish people who don't ride motorcycles and motorcyclists," Mustard said.

About 400 alliance members, many from the Northeast, Canada and Australia and many wearing black leather, arrived in a rumbling parade and slapped hands with hundreds of cheering, clapping middle school students in the mostly white, Protestant community.

A drizzling rain forced a planned outdoor ceremony inside the school gym, where organizers of the alliance's "Paper Clip Ride to Remember 2006" thanked students and presented school principal Linda Hooper with a gift of seven Promeathean computer teaching devices.

The bikers toured the schoolyard display of millions of paper clips in an old German rail car used by Nazis to transport Jews to their deaths, watched the documentary of the Whitwell students' project titled "Paper Clips" and shared a catered barbecue lunch.

"It's an amazing story," said Sam Blumenstein, a biker from Melbourne, Australia. "My mother, Sylvia, was in one of those cattle cars. That's why I'm here."

Rebecca Shrum, 13, was among eighth graders leading the visitor tours and said before the group's visit was announced she never had any idea there were Jewish bikers.

"That never occurred," she said. "We've had people from everywhere."

Shrum said the memorial "makes everybody who comes cry."

English teacher Sandy Roberts and Assistant Principal David Smith started the student project from a 1998 idea as a way to study tolerance and diversity by looking at the systematic murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

After learning that some Norwegians wore paper clips on their clothing during World War II in defiance of the Nazis and in solidarity with Jews, the Whitwell students started collecting paper clips from family and friends.

They eventually used a Web site to request paper clips and share their feelings about the Holocaust. By the end of the first year, they had 700,000. The project got a boost when German journalists Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand and Peter Schroeder featured the project in their syndicated column and later in a book.

The Schroeders traveled to Germany to find a wooden rail car used by the Nazis to transport Jews to concentration camps and the car, built in 1917, is now a memorial attracting visitors daily.

The students' collection now exceeds 30 million paper clips.

Smith said the Friday visit was equally beneficial for the bikers to "see kids who have lived in the South, conservative fundamentalist Christians. They have a stereotype of southern redneck people. This is something that more groups need to do ... We are saying you should be tolerant and learn to respect cultural diversity."

He said social tolerance also "goes with skinny people and fat people. It's tolerance of other people."

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On the Net:

Holocaust Group: http://www.marionschools.org/holocaust

Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance: www.jewishbikers.com