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.”

The film uses survivors’ stories and follows an archeological dig at Calgarth Estate to unearth a little of what life would have been like for children coming from places such as Auschwitz-Birkenau or Theresienstadt to a quiet village in the north west of England.

“I’ll never fully understand what they went through but I’m grateful to have spoken to survivors as there are not many left.

“It’s a real shame that the younger generation might never get meet one,” said the filmmaker.

Over several months the children recuperated and gradually moved to other homes throughout the UK.

Although the hostels are long gone the archeological team uncovered several items, such as a snippet of a newspaper, a fork and a bracelet charm, which date back to the 1940s.

Trevor Avery, director of the Lake District Holocaust Project, said: “The documentary offers a glimpse into what was a remarkable archeological dig.

“The children lived side by side with the local community that was still living on the estate at the end of the war.”