Magdalena Ko³odziejczyk and Rafa³ Ko³odziejczyk s Behind Bars Are Trees of Green documentary has received the silver Spotlight Documentary Film Awards in Atlanta, US. The silver award is granted to unforgettable films with the third-highest scores from our panel , according to the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards website.

“Behind Bars Are Trees of Green” is truly an unforgettable documentary telling the WWII story of Poland as seen through the eyes of a poet and underground resistance movement member Gra¿yna Chrostowska.

“Gra¿yna Chrostowska was our compatriot. She was born and brought up in our hometown – Lublin, south-east Poland,” Magdalena and Rafa³ Ko³odziejczyk told polandin.com, adding that “we were deeply moved by the fate of this girl, a young, lovely, talented poet (who) war did not allow to enter adulthood in normal conditions”.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the invading forces conquered the land beyond Lublin, where Gra¿yna Chrostowska was imprisoned at the Lublin Castle that the German invaders had turned into a prison. From there she was transported to the German concentration camp in Ravensbrück, where she was shot dead with her sister Apolonia in 1943.

“When we started working on the film, all we knew about the German concentration camp in Ravensbruck is that it existed. During the preparation for this project, reading books, looking for sources, step by step we discovered an increasingly terrifying history of this place,” the movie directors said, adding that “in the movie… we touched the story of Ravensbruck superficially. It was the last stop of our heroine’s war wandering, where she was executed.”