It might have been the other way. In the old days, the GDR regime had much stricter policy on traveling abroad. The citizens of GDR could travel freely, without a visa to one country only, and that was Czechoslovakia. Although there has not been any minefields, strips or signaling fence between Poland and the GDR, the border guards had still a job to monitor illegal bordercrossings. So the watchtowers were always in existence. But it was generally a very quiet time. The actual lively period on this border came though mostly after the 1989 and the communist fall. This is when GDR became a regular EU country over night. The photos you taken show a quite fresh activity on the strip. This means a ongoing activity on the part of the Polish borderguards. The illegal bordercrossings then concerned subjects from the former republics of the Soviet Union and the third world countries.
This should give you an idea. Every communist country had their own borderguard system, eventhough some of them had no Western country as a neighbor.
Jesper Nielsen <jesniel@...> wrote:
Jesper Nielsen <jesniel@...> wrote:
Attached two photos taken few days before PL joined EU.They show a border strip on PL land, so PL wanted to keep people leaving PL.But why?In cold war time the iron curtain was at DDDE.Did PL make a border strip during cold war to make sure people didn't escape to another communist country, or is the strip post cold war?Jesper
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