WILMORE, Ky. — Five college communications students at a central Kentucky university are now Emmy winners. 

This week, the Ohio Valley National Association of Television and Sciences announced the student production award winners and Asbury University’s “Don’t Forget Us” won an award for non-fiction film.

Director of the Emmy-winning “Don’t Forget Us,” Gracie Turner, said she was surrounded by family when she found out she was now an offical Emmy winner.

“I definitely cried; it’s so nice to see the countless hours that we put into this come to this,” Turner said.

“Don’t Forget Us” captures students’ perspectives on touring concentration camps used in the Holocaust.

“Most of them don’t know what happened over there and we were just trying to tell the story. We don’t want people to forget what happened,” Turner said.

The students visited Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz as part of their week-long trip.

Madison Anderson, the film’s narrator, said seeing these horrific places created a difficult balance for the group as tourists and filmmakers.

“It was a lot to work through and process, but it was something where you had to flip a switch and be ‘on’ creatively and stylistically and we had to do that during those filming hours,” Anderson said.

Anderson said the film’s message is in the title.

“This can happen again, and we do have to be aware of history. Whether we learn about it in textbooks or not, it’s something real that happened and understand how this did happen and how we can prevent it from happening again,” Anderson said.

Professor Rich Manieri said he’s proud of the students for persevering through countless hours of physically and mentally draining work.

“It’s always great to see great student work get recognized because they put an awful lot into it,” Manieri said.

The trip was part of Asbury’s cross-cultural requirement for all students, which requires them to travel abroad for work related to their field of study.