Border Guard (Poland)

The Polish Border Guard, in Polish Straz Graniczna, is the border security agency that patrols the borders of Poland. A first Border Guard was founded in 1928 in the Second Polish Republic and guarded the northern, western and southern frontiers with Germany, the Free City of Danzig, the sea, Czechoslovakia and Romania, while a separate military formation, the Border Protection Corps, held the eastern border. It was organized in a military style with uniformed and armed agents, and had its own river and sea flotilla and training school. Its members, under General Walerian Czuma, fought alongside land forces in the 1939 invasion of Poland. After the communist-era Border Protection Troops filled the role from 1945 to 1989, the Border Guard was reestablished in 1990 as a civil, police-type service that began operations in 1991, and it now guards the borders of Poland and the European Union.