SEVENTY years since they first set foot on British soil a group of child concentration camp survivors are being remembered through a new exhibition.

The 300 children - all orphans who were flown from Prague to Carlisle Airport - arrived at Calgarth, Troutbeck Bridge, on August 14, 1945, for rehabilitation after spending years in horrific Nazi camps.

The 70th anniversary will be marked with a number of arts projects at Windermere Library, the home of the Lake District Holocaust Project.

One of them, Flowers of Auschwitz, is a specially commissioned show in the gallery space that connects to an outdoor, and unique, garden design involving children.

The exhibition includes film, photography and sculpture work put together by Rose Smith and Trevor Avery, who were given access to a privately owned garden nursery at Rajsko in Poland, where greenhouses were built by Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz Birkenau. Most of the original greenhouses remain unused since 1945, and Rose and Trevor were the first British artists to be allowed in to film and take photographs. During the first part of the war the greenhouses were both the base for initial experiments in rubber production through the use of specially grown dandelions, and later growing vegetables and flowers for the Nazis.

Their visit to Rajsko also led to a specially produced commemorative garden in the Windermere Library grounds, involving children from St Cuthbert's Catholic Primary School, Goodly Dale Community Primary School and St Martin and St Mary Church of England Primary School, in Windermere.

Rose explained that the colours and shapes in the garden represented specific symbols different types of people were forced to wear on their striped uniforms in the camps, including Raisko and Auschwitz, by the Nazis.

She added: "The children involved really took on board the planting of the flowers and being involved in a project that was inspired by a book of drawings of child survivors produced by Zinovii Tolkatchev, a liberator of Auschwitz, who said the children there were like bright flowers in a bleak landscape."

Also showing in the library is a specially produced film installation by leading international artist Miroslaw Balka who is based in Warsaw. Following a recent visit by Balka to the Lake District Holocaust Project his film Nacht und Nebel has been adapted and joined by a film based on an aspect of the library building.

The film is inspired by Nacht-und-nebel-aktion (‘night and fog operation’), a Nazi operation that began in 1941 where thousands of people ‘disappeared.’

Balka has won a string of awards and accolades and was commissioned to fill the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in 2009, for which he produced a giant steel structure titled ‘How It Is’.

"We wanted to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the child Holocaust Survivors to the Lake District in a special way," continued Trevor, whose director of the Lake District Holocaust Project.

"Many messages of goodwill have come from across the country and from all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds.

"Special events are also planned and this is a unique coming together for a project that holds hands with people across continents."

Flowers of Auschwitz and Nacht und Nebel open on Friday, August 14, and run until October 31, on the first floor of Windermere Library.

The garden project and exhibitions are shown as part of a project led by Lake District Holocaust Project (LDHP) with support from South Lakeland District Council (SLDC), Arts Council England, North West, Hadfield Trust.