The Lake District Holocaust Project (LDHP), an initiative to commemorate and tell the stories of 300 child survivors who were flown to the region in 1945, commissioned local filmmaker Thomas Gardner to make a documentary about their early experiences in the UK. It is now available on YouTube.
The story of The Windermere Children — a BBC film released earlier this year — may be familiar but the LDHP wanted to dig a little deeper.
Mr Gardner’s documentary, Route to Paradise, takes a more forensic approach to the story of the child survivors who were flown from Czechoslovakia to Carlisle and then housed in hostels on the Calgarth Estate, about one mile from Lake Windermere.
“When I was in school, [one of the Windermere Children] Arek Hersh came to do a talk,” said Mr Gardner. “It was fascinating because we were never taught about the Holocaust or the Windermere Children. So I went off and did some reading about it myself and kept in touch with Arek over the years.”
