THE story of a unique photograph album of Jews arriving at Auschwitz is being shared with visitors to the Lake District Holocaust Project.

The project's home at Windermere library is the first place in the UK to host the exhibition about the Auschwitz Album.

The display - called A Place on Earth - is visiting from its permanent home at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. It tells the background story of the album, which shows in detail the arrival of a transport of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous camp in Poland.

The exhibition is being shown until the end of November, alongside the permanent display about the 300 child Holocaust survivors who came from Eastern Europe to the Lake District in 1945, to begin their recovery after years of suffering.

Trevor Avery, director of the Lake District Holocaust Project, explained: "Many of the children and youngsters who came to the Lake District in the summer of 1945 had passed through Auschwitz at some point in their horrific journey through the Holocaust, so this exhibition is of great significance to the Lake District Holocaust Project."

The black-and-white pictures in the album were taken in summer 1944 by Nazi officials and they show the arrival of Hungarian Jews. "For this purpose a special rail line had been extended from the railway station outside the camp to a ramp inside Auschwitz-Birkenau itself," said Mr Avery. "Many of the photos in the album were taken on the ramp and also show aspects of the selection process.

"Those considered fit for work were sent into the camp, where they were registered, de-loused and distributed to the barracks. The rest were sent to the gas chambers."

The exhibition tells the story behind the album, which is described as "the only photographic evidence of Jews arriving in Auschwitz or any other death camp".

It was given to Yad Vashem by Lilly Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier, who was deported with her family and most of Hungary's Jews in the spring of 1944, aged just 18. She was separated from her parents and younger brothers on the ramp at Auschwitz and never saw any of them again.

On the day of her liberation from the Dora concentration camp hundreds of miles from Auschwitz, she found a photo album in the deserted SS barracks. Within its pages were pictures of her family and friends as they arrived on the ramp.

Lilly donated the album to Yad Vashem in 1980, where it still resides and is treasured for the future.

For more about the Lake District Holocaust Project, see www.ldhp.org.uk