School receives millions of buttons for Holocaust memorial

A school has been sent more than five million buttons after it launched an appeal to commemorate victims of the Holocaust.

The Lakes School, near Windermere, had hoped to get 1.5 million buttons, one for each child killed.

But the pupils' appeal went global after the launch in January and buttons have been sent from all over the world.

Trevor Avery, from the Lake District Holocaust Project, said plans were now being developed to display them all.

"The scale of it is bewildering, even beyond our wildest dreams," he added.

Mr Avery told BBC Cumbria the weight of the buttons was as much of an issue as the number of them.

A local firm, Lakeland, has agreed to take the buttons into storage after the fastenings "took over half a classroom".

The project came about after the pupils were visited by a holocaust survivor.

Mr Avery said one of the students said she could not visualise the number of people who died in the holocaust so came up with the idea of using buttons to represent each person.

The Lakes School is built on the site of an old school which housed about 300 children who survived the concentration camps after World War Two.

Mr Avery said the long-term plan is to develop a "permanent memorial" with the buttons at the school but "we don't really know yet what it will look like".