Six Million Pennies, Six Million Lives,Tova Stulman

In an effort to get students to comprehend what an immeasurable tragedy the Holocaust was for the Jewish people, many teachers have tried to implement innovative lessons to try and get its impact across. Perhaps the most famous attempt has been the project that launched the movie "Paper Clips," where students from Whitwell, Tenn., collected 6 million paper clips to reflect the enormity of the number.

Students of Hannibal High School in Hannibal County, located in central New York, have been busily preparing their own self-taught lesson since January 2007. Their goal is to raise six million pennies, equaling $60,000, to be donated to various charities.

Aptly called the "6 Million Pennies, 6 Million Lives" project, the idea originated with Arlene Laut, a resource room teacher at the high school, who had come up with the idea along with several of the social studies teachers.

"I'm the only Jewish teacher in the high school," says Laut, "and the only teacher in the district who's been through any training to teach the Holocaust."

Laut, who is also a consult teacher for the Holocaust and has attended several seminars on teaching the Holocaust in Washington, D.C., says the impact of the Holocaust and its epic tragic proportions led her and her fellow teachers to look for a way to effectively translate that into something her students could begin to comprehend.

"We thought about the paper clip idea, which had of course been done before, but we decided on pennies because they carry a weight to them," explains Laut. "Each penny doesn't come close to what a life weighs, obviously, and we hoped to impress that on the students."

The students are in charge of the entire project, from making posters and putting out jars for penny donations, to regularly collecting the coins and meticulously counting them. So far, approximately 100,000 pennies have been collected, and if the goal of six million pennies is met, the students will have raised an impressive $60,000. They plan to donate the funds to several charities, including the Safe Haven Museum and Education Center, located in Oswego, N.Y., a museum dedicated to preserving the memories of the more than 900 Holocaust survivors who settled in Oswego after the war as guests of President Roosevelt.

As part of the teachers' initiative, a group of students have formed to learn on their own time. "We don't have the time or financial resources to incorporate it into part of the curriculum," says Laut, "so a group of students are spending their own time studying further about the Holocaust."

It is through the Safe Haven Museum that Hannibal High School arranged to have a Holocaust survivor, Marion Blumenthal Lazan, speak to over 800 students about her experience growing up in Germany before World War II and her time in the concentration camps. The school is also planning to host a performance of a one-man semiautobiographical play called "Notes to the Motherland," featuring a man named Paul Rajeckas. Rajeckas is the son of a Nazi sympathizer, yet amazingly also the grandson of a woman who hid Jews in her barn.

"Our big emphasis is to make the connection from the past to the present," says Laut. "We want them to understand the horrible things that are still going on today, like in Darfur, and to become stronger advocates for others, as well as for themselves."

People who are interested in donating money can make out checks to the Hannibal Senior High Student Council, and send them to Arleen Laut, Hannibal High School, 928 Caygua Street, Hannibal, NY 13074. The council cashes all the checks donated and converts the money into pennies. The school also has a website devoted to the "6 Million Pennies, 6 Million Lives" project at www.hannibal.cnyric.org/6millionpennies/history.htm.

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