Ky. journalism students make documentary on the holocaust

JESSAMINE COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - Five journalism students from Asbury University shot a documentary chronicling their trip to three concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

The film is called ‘Don’t Forget Us.’

Asbury journalism professor Rich Manieri helped document the ten-day trip.

“Our intention was to try to show the Holocaust and the surrounding events through the eyes of our students,” said Manieri.

The assignment was to shoot this as a news event. Although, in reality, those horrific events are seven decades old, if you’re 20 years old, it’s new to you.

“It is absolutely new to them, and I think because it’s new to them, it then becomes new to the viewer,” said Manieri.

Manieri says the shoot was emotional.

“The one overriding feeling is what human beings are capable of doing to one another,” said Manieri.

The 42-minute film debuted in an on-campus auditorium in front of 300 people.

Gracie Turner was on the trip. It took her months to edit the piece.

“There is a gas chamber that is still up. I didn’t process what it was until we walked in,” Turner said. “It’s just sad the places that are still there. They still have the rumbles of the crematoriums that were still there.”

During this time, Turner was trying to work and hold it together.

“All I can say is sad, and there’s so many emotions that I’m feeling, and it is overwhelming,” Turner said.

From Turner’s perspective, the holocaust isn’t taught in school like it should.

“I took German in high school, and we were never allowed to talk about this,” Turner said. “I showed the documentary to my grandparents, and they told me they had no idea all this happened.”

The next step is to get the documentary into a film festival or distributed to a streaming service.

“We think people need to see it,” Manieri said. It’s worth seeing, and it’s an important story.”

According to a Pew Research Center survey, fewer than half of U.S. adults can correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the number of Jews who were murdered or the way Hitler came into power.

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