PUPILS at a Lake District school are seeking 1.5million buttons for a poignant Holocaust memorial.

The Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge, is hoping Gazette readers will help them with their "mammoth task" by looking in their sewing boxes and bits-and-bobs drawers for buttons they no longer need.

The inspiration for the project was a visit by Polish Jewish survivor Arek Hersh last year. Mr Hersh was one of "The Boys" - the 300 child Holocaust survivors who found refuge at the Calgarth Estate in August 1945, after the Nazi camps' liberation.

The site is today home to the Lakes School, where history teacher Laura Oram asked students to design a memorial to the six million people who perished, after Mr Hersh's visit.

She told the Gazette that pupils had "struggled to conceptualize" the enormity of the numbers, explaining: "We then started discussing what small item we could collect six million of, to help people to understand and visualise this enormous tragedy."

A Year 10 student, known as B, came up with the idea of collecting buttons. "She perceptively noted that buttons are all different and individual, just like the people who were killed in such awful circumstances," said Mrs Oram. "B felt that a memorial should recognise this individuality, and therefore our project - B's Buttons' - was born."

After some consideration, it was decided they would collect 1.5million buttons to reflect the children that were murdered in the atrocity.

So far in its "mammoth task" the school has collected 50,000 buttons including 1,700 from worn-out Windermere Lakes Cruises staff uniforms. The counting process has been helped by a donation of storage bags from local kitchenware company Lakeland.

Once complete. the collection will be transformed into a permanent memorial on the Lakes School site, designed and planned with the Lake District Holocaust Project.

This chapter in history is captured in a special exhibition at Windermere's Ellerthwaite library, and plans are also being forged to expand it into a world-class museum and visitor experience.

The orphans spent several months living in dormitories built for wartime workers at the Sunderland flying boat factory.

If you have any spare buttons, please send them to: The Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge, Windermere LA23 1HW. For more, visit www.facebook.com/lakesbuttons and the Lake District Holocaust Project's website at ldhp.org.uk