Last month, a documentary created by three staff members from the College of Communications was awarded the CINE Golden Eagle Award, as reported by The Collegian. The documentary, “No. 4 Street of Our Lady”, is about a Polish woman, Francisca Halamajowa, during World War II who saved 16 of her Jewish neighbors.

The film’s official site provides more detail:

On the eve of World War II, more than 6,000 Jews lived in Sokal, a small town in Eastern Poland, now part of Ukraine. By the end of the war, only about 30 had survived, half of them rescued by Halamajowa. For close to two years, she hid her Jewish neighbors in her tiny home and cooked and cared for them, right under the noses of German troops camped on her property as well as hostile neighbors. Two families were hidden in the hayloft of her pigsty, and one family in a hole dug under her kitchen floor. In the final months of the war, she also provided shelter to a German soldier who had defected – an act that nearly led to her execution.

Judy Maltz, one of the three filmmakers and a journalism lecturer, is the granddaughter of one of the men saved by Halamajowa. She, along with fellow Penn State staff members Barbara Bird and Richie Sherman, decided to tell the story of the events surrounding Halamajowa and the lives that she saved.

The CINE Golden Eagle Award is a fantastic honor and a true mark of recognition for all those involved in the making of the film. According to CINE, the Golden Eagle Award

… acknowledges high quality production in a variety of content categories for professional, independent and student filmmakers. Each year, hundreds of jurors judge nearly 1,000 entries in 32 categories. The names and descriptions of the productions receiving awards can be found by visiting the winners’ page of this website.

You may check out the other CINE Golden Eagle Award recipients here. The official “No. 4 Street of Our Lady” site makes no indication of any upcoming screenings of the film, but we will update the page as more information becomes available.