Buried Prayers

Maidanek was a concentration camp established by the German military during World War II in Lubin, a town in Poland. Most of the inmates of Maidanek were captured during the Warsaw Uprising, and while nearly all of the Nazi death camps attempted to hide the truth of their ultimate purpose from the prisoners, the guards at Lubin did not. This led to an unusual practice among those held at Maidanek — aware that most of them would never leave the camp alive, inmates buried their valuables in a field that separated the camp’s barracks rather than allow the guards to take them after they were executed. In 1944, as Russian forces moved into Poland to capture the territory, the Germans fled from Maidanek, and over six decades later most the buried heirlooms have yet to be recovered. Filmmaker Steven Meyer tells the strange story of the hidden treasures of Maidanek and interviews a handful of the camp’s survivors in the documentary Buried Prayers, which was an official selection at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival.