Poznań, cemeteries on Winiary Hill

In northern Poznań is an imposing hill on which vineyards were cultivated until the early 19th century. It then became the site of a massive brick fortress - Festung Posen - built by the Prussians to consolidate their new possessions gained from the partitioning of the state of Poland in 1793.

The fort's purpose was twofold. Firstly, to protect Prussia's new border with Russia - yes, the Russian empire had also swallowed a vast swathe of Poland; and secondly, to discourage any Poles unhappy with the demolition of their country from rebelling against their new masters.

The Poles had (understandably) sided with France during the Napoleonic Wars, and from 1807 until 1815 - before the status quo was restored - much of their country was "reborn" as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. So the Prussians (equally understandably) felt unloved.

The wooded southern slope just below the fortress is now home to several cemeteries: it is a magnificent, evocative site for burials. Some of the graves are private ones, but there are several military cemeteries and memorials. The majority of graves are of Polish soldiers killed in a variety of military campaigns and uprisings. Some are of Russian soldiers who died in the successful siege of the fortress in 1945.

But the war cemetery in this photo is different. It is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It has the graves are of 174 World War I servicemen, brought from the Western Front to the Fortress, which was used as a prisoner of war camp. The WW2 graves here are more diverse: 234 British servicemen, 21 Canadians, 18 Australians , 6 New Zealanders, 3 South Africans, 16 Polish, 1 French, 1 Greek and 1 Norwegian. The dead were mainly airmen who had been shot down during air raids.

To the south west of Posen/Poznań was Stalag Luft III, a secure prison camp for captured airmen. As fictionalised in the film "The Great Escape", fifty of the escapees from the camp in 1944 were executed on Hitler's orders; the cremated remains of many of them were reburied here after the war.