THE Lake District Holocaust Project is offering a rare opportunity for people to see the remarkable Memory Quilt.

On show at Windermere Library, more than 150 individual sections of work were produced for the four-part quilt as part of an international initiative by artists working closely with child Holocaust survivors and their families from around the world, many with a Lake District connection. The individual sections are combined to form four huge hangings of over nine square metres each that create an emotional and dramatic experience.

The quilt represents all 732 of the only child Holocaust survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. The idea was conceived by Julia Burton, whose father is one of those young survivors brought to the UK in 1945; the first 300 of the children arrived in the Lake District in August that year.

Work designed and made by the child survivors who stayed in the region is represented along with work made by their relatives and off spring. The impact is an incredibly powerful statement about survival, resilience and ultimate triumph over terrible adversity.

Trevor Avery, director of the Lake District Holocaust Project, said that those who came to the Lake District described it as like “arriving in Paradise.”

He added: "The paradise that they describe is not only the landscape and location but also the clean sheets, hot water, food, and the fact that they were treated with dignity for the first time in a long long time."

Trevor, who is also vice-president of 45 Aid Society (Holocaust Survivors), and recent recipient of a BEM, added that showing The Memory Quilt was an amazing opportunity to see how the relatives of those children who came in 1945 both commemorate and celebrate the lives of those remarkable survivors: “Given the links that the area has with textiles, quilts and tapestry work, it is ever so significant that the makers have given us permission to show the quilts over the entire summer."

The quilts have been exhibited across Britain, including the Jewish Museum, in London, and the Windermere show is the first full scale exhibition for them in the north of England.

The exhibition is open to the public until September 3.