I have personally met those who manage to get over the wall. Each year I go to Białowieża for a week or so of bird counting, which gives me a pass into the strict reservation (i.e. no one other than scientists are allowed in). GPT-5 estimates that 60-80% of crossing attempts are in that border strip of around 60km—mainly because this is dense forest and marshland.
The first year we’d meet wet, tired, hungry and cold groups of 2-3 people every couple of days. These were very scared and confused people who were promised good jobs in Europe, but got bused to the border, documents confiscated and pointed in the direction of Poland. Which in this case was 100 km^2 of virgin forest (the last lowland one in Europe). There were people who would try to find them and smuggle them over to Germany (where they wanted to go anyway), but at the same time you had the border guards running around, and also local toughs who wanted to show those nasty foreigners where their place was. To drive in to Białowieża (the village next to the national park) you needed to have a special pass, and the police would stop everyone driving in or out and check their cars. We’d give whatever food we had to these people, as you could see they needed it.
The next years there were soldiers patrolling the forest and the immigrant groups were better organised. They would be wearing more appropriate clothes (waterproof stuff, mainly) - the previous groups didn’t know what they were getting in to, but these at least came semi prepared. These we wouldn’t give food to, just wave at them and point the way to the edge of the forest.
This year most of the soldiers are gone, as the wall is supposed to stop the immigrants. And we didn’t meet immigrants that often. But when we would, it was groups of 10-20 people, well dressed, with a guide with a GPS (or at least a proper compass) showing them which way to go, along well trampled paths.
When I chatted with the soldiers, they’d complain that they’d catch a group, send them back over the border, just to have to catch them again a few days later. If someone is in a bad state, they’ll keep them in hospital for a bit, then bus them back to the border.
Even if a group gets across the fence, they have to cross something like 10km of real forest (not pine fields) in which it’s really easy to get lost, then once they are out, they need to either go hundreds of kilometers across hostile territory (to the German border) or find someone willing to smuggle them out (which requires coordination and trust). The fence itself is not that much of a barrier—it will slow them down for 10-20 minutes, but it’s not that hard to climb it (with a ladder and a blanket), and there have been multiple attempts to dig tunnels underneath (of which I know of).
It’s hard to know what the real numbers are. All sides try to keep things murky. The ~10 scientists I hang out with there would in aggregate see a group daily, and those are just those they’d see. Sometimes the park guards would tell us to be careful as they knew of a group in a given area. Most of these will be caught, but a lot will get through. GPT-5 gives me the following (note that these are attempts, most of which will be repeat offenders, and there are a lot fewer successes than attempts):
2021
39,697 attempts
2022
≈15,600 attempts
2023
26,000 attempts
2024
30,090 attempts
2025 YTD
≥20,200 (Aug 18) → ≈23,400 (Sep 8)
Most of these are on the border itself, where people trying to climb the fence are stopped. It’s still a lot. Few immigrants want to stay in Poland (why would they? :D) - they want to get to Germany. GPT-5 gives the following numbers from German police reports (I haven’t checked these), which is a lower bound on how many get through:
Year
Detected entries to Germany via “Belarus‑Route”
Notes / sources
2021 (May–Dec only)
11,228
First systematic reporting started 1 May 2021; special (provisional) Bundespolizei tally. (Bundestag DServer)
Two anchors: (i) H1 official = 3,117; (ii) for 2024 Germany counted ~16,000 unauthorised entries at the Polish border, of which about one‑third were attributed to the Belarus route ⇒ ~5,300 (lower bound at that border; entries via Czechia add a bit). (Mediendienst Integration)
The fact that Germany has reinstated border checks for the last year also suggests that a lot are getting through, or at least that Germany believes that they do.
I have personally met those who manage to get over the wall. Each year I go to Białowieża for a week or so of bird counting, which gives me a pass into the strict reservation (i.e. no one other than scientists are allowed in). GPT-5 estimates that 60-80% of crossing attempts are in that border strip of around 60km—mainly because this is dense forest and marshland.
The first year we’d meet wet, tired, hungry and cold groups of 2-3 people every couple of days. These were very scared and confused people who were promised good jobs in Europe, but got bused to the border, documents confiscated and pointed in the direction of Poland. Which in this case was 100 km^2 of virgin forest (the last lowland one in Europe). There were people who would try to find them and smuggle them over to Germany (where they wanted to go anyway), but at the same time you had the border guards running around, and also local toughs who wanted to show those nasty foreigners where their place was. To drive in to Białowieża (the village next to the national park) you needed to have a special pass, and the police would stop everyone driving in or out and check their cars. We’d give whatever food we had to these people, as you could see they needed it.
The next years there were soldiers patrolling the forest and the immigrant groups were better organised. They would be wearing more appropriate clothes (waterproof stuff, mainly) - the previous groups didn’t know what they were getting in to, but these at least came semi prepared. These we wouldn’t give food to, just wave at them and point the way to the edge of the forest.
This year most of the soldiers are gone, as the wall is supposed to stop the immigrants. And we didn’t meet immigrants that often. But when we would, it was groups of 10-20 people, well dressed, with a guide with a GPS (or at least a proper compass) showing them which way to go, along well trampled paths.
When I chatted with the soldiers, they’d complain that they’d catch a group, send them back over the border, just to have to catch them again a few days later. If someone is in a bad state, they’ll keep them in hospital for a bit, then bus them back to the border.
Even if a group gets across the fence, they have to cross something like 10km of real forest (not pine fields) in which it’s really easy to get lost, then once they are out, they need to either go hundreds of kilometers across hostile territory (to the German border) or find someone willing to smuggle them out (which requires coordination and trust). The fence itself is not that much of a barrier—it will slow them down for 10-20 minutes, but it’s not that hard to climb it (with a ladder and a blanket), and there have been multiple attempts to dig tunnels underneath (of which I know of).
It’s hard to know what the real numbers are. All sides try to keep things murky. The ~10 scientists I hang out with there would in aggregate see a group daily, and those are just those they’d see. Sometimes the park guards would tell us to be careful as they knew of a group in a given area. Most of these will be caught, but a lot will get through. GPT-5 gives me the following (note that these are attempts, most of which will be repeat offenders, and there are a lot fewer successes than attempts):
Most of these are on the border itself, where people trying to climb the fence are stopped. It’s still a lot. Few immigrants want to stay in Poland (why would they? :D) - they want to get to Germany. GPT-5 gives the following numbers from German police reports (I haven’t checked these), which is a lower bound on how many get through:
The fact that Germany has reinstated border checks for the last year also suggests that a lot are getting through, or at least that Germany believes that they do.