Harry Potter specs to be used in Holocaust artwork

Jan 3, 2008, 11:16 GMT

London - Harry Potter's trademark round spectacles are to form part of a new artwork designed to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, it emerged Thursday.

Actor Daniel Radcliffe, the 18-year-old London boy who played Harry Potter in a series of films based on the bestselling books, has donated his first pair of glasses to an exhibition leading up to National Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.

Radcliffe, whose mother is Jewish, gave the spectacles, an oval, grey metal-framed pair, to the Respectacles Project in Britain.

In an accompanying note, he wrote: 'Please find enclosed my first pair of glasses which I wore at school at six. I wish you every success with the exhibition.'

Other celebrities donating their glasses include Yoko Ono, actor Stephen Fry, and entertainers Jerry and Ronnie Corbett.

Around 1,000 pairs have so far been donated to the art project, which is inspired by a famous Second World War picture of a mountain of mangled spectacles - a stark illustration of the scale of the death and human suffering.