At Markajmy, in the commune of Lidzbark-Warminski, lies a military cemetery of the First World War. Located in a forest, over an area of 1.08 hectares, it is increasingly buried under vegetation. It is fairly well marked, in German, by steles topped with a cross. A few panels explain the history of the place on site.
The cemetery was placed on the list of protected sites in 1987. The plaques indicating the names of the buried prisoners of war are for the most part broken or buried under vegetation. A few pieces of these plaques have been gathered in the eastern part of the cemetery. In the middle of the graves, one can see a pyramid-shaped monument, topped with a Tsarist double-headed eagle, dedicated to the Russian soldiers, and a large white cross (the "Cross of Sacrifice") dedicated to the British soldiers. On the pyramid is affixed a plaque, on which one can read, in German and Russian: "To the comrades-in-arms of the Heilsberg prisoner-of-war camp 1914-1918".
The prisoners buried here were held in the Stammlager of Heilsberg, a German prisoner camp for soldiers and officers at Lidzbark-Warminski, in East Prussia. This camp was created in the autumn of 1914, after the victory of Tannenberg against the Russian army. The prisoners were then employed for local agriculture and industry. The camp was directed by the retired Generalleutnant Friedrich Imme, and the prisoners were guarded by men of a German company of the old reserve: the Landsturm. About 15,000 prisoners passed through this camp.
The prisoners who died were buried in the cemetery of the village of Markajmy. Historical sources count 2,741 people buried in this cemetery: 2,081 Russians (of various nationalities and faiths, including many Poles), 506 Romanians, 39 Britons, 43 French, 19 Italians, 8 Serbs, 45 Belgian civilian workers and a few dozen German refugees from Volhynia. Many died of typhus. The last burial took place in July 1919. A few death certificates remain at the civil registry office of Lidzbark-Warminski.
In 1922, it was decided that the graves of the Commonwealth soldiers should be gathered in the British cemeteries of Cologne, Hamburg, Kassel and Berlin. Thus, in 1927, of the 51 Commonwealth graves in the Markajmy cemetery, 12 were transferred to a cemetery in south-western Berlin. The exhumation of the others was in fact impossible, because the burials were often collective and they were buried together with prisoners of other nationalities. This is why the commission in charge of the transfer of the bodies had a cross, the "Cross of Sacrifice", erected here in 1930, near the place where the 39 remaining ones rest. Their names are inscribed at the foot of the cross. As the state of the cemetery was deplorable after the Second World War, it was decided in 1960 to commemorate the prisoners of Heilsberg on a memorial located in the British military cemetery of Malbork, until it should become possible to restore the Markajmy cemetery. In the spring of 2014, in the southern part of the site, a British plot was created, restoring the memory of the prisoners. Each prisoner has his own stele there. The plot is very well maintained. An explanatory panel explains all this in English and Polish.
As for the French prisoners of war, whose names, ranks, regiments and dates of death are available online, 24 were exhumed and transferred to the national necropolis of prisoners of war at Sarrebourg in the Moselle, and the remains of the 19 remaining ones were handed over to their families or still rest in this cemetery.