I know, from the old days, that all the borders in the Eastern Bloc were
closed off. In fact, I remember crossing from Poland - DDR at night and
the border was floodlight, just like the Iron Curtain. You simply could
not take a stroll from the GDR to Poland or Romania to Hungary or
whatever. You could only cross the borders with the relevant permission
at a checkpoint. They were not as tightly guarded as the border to the
West but they were guarded nonetheless. Also, for about 20 miles to each
side of the border you could be pulled over and have your ID checked.
Even if you did get over the fence, the immediate vicinity was
"Sperrgebiet" or security zone.
JK
>
> 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:
> 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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> > ATTACHMENT part 2 image/jpeg name=depl2.jpg
>
>
> > ATTACHMENT part 3 image/jpeg name=depl1.jpg
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