Windermere Children return for Holocaust Memorial Day
The award-winning drama is to be screened in the cinema where the children watched films in 1945
Brigit Grant is the Jewish News Supplements Editor
The Royalty Cinema in Bowness-on-Windermere will play host to a unique homecoming event three years in the planning when the award-winning drama ‘The Windermere Children‘ is shown in the Lake District to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Set in the Lake District the drama directed by Michael Samuels tells the story of the 300 child Holocaust Survivors who came to stay on Calgarth Estate and begin new lives in the summer of 1945. A short film – One Night from Prague -by award winning Windermere based film maker Thomas Gardner will also be part of the event and it shows scenes of the surviving children and their families visiting the Royalty cinema during a reunion in May 2022.
Among those at that reunion was Harry Olmer, a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp and the Czech ghetto of Terezin, who arrived in Windermere as an orphan and 75 years later became a central figure in the film.
A recorded interview with Olmer sharing his reflections on the film and his time in the Lake District will also be played at the screening at the Royalty cinema is the very same picture house where the original Windermere Children watched films in 1945.
To accompany the screening Trevor Avery, director of Lake District Holocaust Project, who was an advisor on the film will also be doing a Q&A.
“This is a wonderful homecoming for me and The Windermere Children,” said Avery. “The big screen experience draws you into the movie, especially when you consider that you will be watching it in the very same cinema the Jewish children used to watch films when they were here in 1945, and only a short distance from where they stayed at the time”.
Entry is free and all are welcome.
For further details contact Trevor Avery on 07876433490 or email info@ldhp.org.uk
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