Franciszek Zabecki, Dispatcher of Treblinka Station

[pilgrimofdark]

“The Witnesses Testified as Follows…” Records of Interrogations of Polish Railways Employees who Worked at the Stations near the Operation Reinhardt Camps

Only contains a single reference to Pronicki noting him as station master: https://zagladazydow.pl/index.php/zz/ar ... 67/393/739

I haven't taken the time to look into Pronicki much yet, but he's a bit of a ghost outside of Zabecki's memoirs.

Chris Webb makes the bold claim that a stationmaster who was also a Home Army partisan would be "the only trained observer on the spot throughout the entire existence of the Treblinka extermination camp."

So Pronicki may have observed nothing worth writing down? He was so important that no one tracked him down after the war to record what the "only trained" eye observed during the most important period of the T-II camp's operation? Or we're just missing some sort of account thus far.

No one with the name Pronicki shows up in the Polish Central Military Archive database, but it's certainly not complete. Nothing in the Polish state archives search.

No one under his name shows up in the 1942 Warsaw District telephone directory, but that might be expected. Nothing in 1940 or 1950, either.

Wojcik's Treblinka '43 book contains that story. He cites Zabecki's memoirs and nothing else. Calls him "Artur Pronicki," but there is no one named "Artur" in Zabecki's memoirs at all. Treblinka '43 is a stereotypical example of the "Death Camp Hagiography" genre I'm starting to get a sense for.

I'll summarize in this thread everything Zabecki says about Pronicki as a jumping-off point if we find anything additional.

If you want the Polish or AI-translated English version of his memoirs, let me know and I'll send a PDF link.

[Archie]

Excellent work, where's SanityCheck on this one?! Can we please get an HC article from Sergey explaining why, despite all this evidence, Zabecki was the one who took these photographs, for old time's sake?

We've been looking into Zabecki since September 30 when this thread went up. Plenty of time to point out any mistakes I made, and I made a few early in the thread while researching various ideas.

• No pushback about him not being the stationmaster
• No pushback about him saying someone else took the photo
• No pushback about there being two photos, not one

The day after Christmas, I requested any input that the two photos were either the same or distinct. Even from a devil's advocate perspective. No anti-revisionists responded.

It's possible the two photos were identified as distinct somewhere along the line, but not in any of the sources I could find. And the "usual suspects" stated the one photo was "unique." But someone could have figured it out earlier.

They're interesting photos whether people believe that they show the "burning of Treblinka" or not.

A new edition of Chris Webb's book on Treblinka is coming out in April. Any bets on whether he'll stop referring to Zabecki as "stationmaster" a dozen times like in the 2021 edition?

Good job on the article, pilgrim. There are some unresolved mysteries, but I think you took it about as far as you reasonably could. How did you get through the Zabecki memoirs? You tracked down a physical copy of it and did a Google/AI translation?

The anti-revisionist side, if they ever deign to comment, will probably just say it doesn't matter who took the photos, we can just be confident it's legit. I was trying to think about a way to confirm or disconfirm the place and date but that's going to be tricky. One way would be if there was something distinctive about the terrain, but it looks pretty non-descript to me. I would think it might be possible to roughly date a photo based on the type of film, especially if you have the physical photo. But maybe with a good enough scan it could be narrowed down based on the grain and other features? Just an idea. And then of course there's the Zygmunt Wierzbowski guy. If something turns up there, that might provide more hints.

As I recall, a while ago you were questioning whether there was really an uprising at Treblinka. Are you still leaning toward this view?

[pilgrimofdark]

Good job on the article, pilgrim. There are some unresolved mysteries, but I think you took it about as far as you reasonably could. How did you get through the Zabecki memoirs? You tracked down a physical copy of it and did a Google/AI translation?

Thanks, Archie, much appreciated.

I couldn't get a physical copy, so I paid a library for a scan of the book. Then used an image-to-text extraction tool online to get it all in TXT files per page. Then imported all of that into Word and spent a few hours cleaning it up. Then uploaded the whole file to Google Translate. Then read through it once and corrected any corruptions and checked unclear phrases.

Cleaning up the Polish text in Word/LibreOffice takes the longest, but it's a few hours of work fixing some formatting. It mostly consists of putting back together paragraph breaks between pages.

Well worth it to get a readable English translation in the end. Something that would have been completely impossible a few years ago (for me at least).

The anti-revisionist side, if they ever deign to comment, will probably just say it doesn't matter who took the photos, we can just be confident it's legit.

Yes, they have a very convenient way to self-authenticate documents entirely lacking in external authentication.

"Someone took a couple photos at some time and someone else said it was of something. Good enough for me."

To their credit, that's way less work. Work stupider, not harder.

I was trying to think about a way to confirm or disconfirm the place and date but that's going to be tricky. One way would be if there was something distinctive about the terrain, but it looks pretty non-descript to me. I would think it might be possible to roughly date a photo based on the type of film, especially if you have the physical photo. But maybe with a good enough scan it could be narrowed down based on the grain and other features? Just an idea. And then of course there's the Zygmunt Wierzbowski guy. If something turns up there, that might provide more hints.

I've spent a while on Google Street View around the Treblinka area looking for the foreground tree+60 years or the distant treeline+60 years. Probably an impossible task.

From Treblinka station, though, there's no clear view to the camps, so I don't think it was taken from there.

Then I looked through a few Polish volunteer firefighter newsletters, thinking similar photos might have been printed. Another needle in a haystack.

AI analyzed that it could have been taken between the 1940s to 1960s based on camera technology at the time, which wasn't helpful. That could be a total AI hallucination or accurate, I have no way to check.

As I recall, a while ago you were questioning whether there was really an uprising at Treblinka. Are you still leaning toward this view?

I still lean towards doing the exercise to question it and ask, "based on contemporary accounts, how and what can we know about the uprising?" There were some early reports stating it happened at the Labor Camp, others at the "camp for Jews."

Once Wiernik's book shows up at the 1944 Soviet investigation, witnesses are no longer separate, so start "remembering" details from his book. So before the Soviets screw everything up (intentionally or not, doesn't matter to me), there's limited time to figure out what was known.

[pilgrimofdark]

New Wiki page: Jozef Pronicki (Treblinka Stationmaster)

Summary of all the mentions of Józef Pronicki I could find in Ząbecki's memoirs.

Checking the Polish archives, Central Military Archive, and a few genealogy sites, nothing comes up with anyone ever named "Józef Pronicki."

Ząbecki can't be the only evidence this person ever existed, right?

[Stubble]

Why do I feel a need to look up the death certificate for that guy's wife?

Am I an @#$%hole?

I can find 0 evidence this man or his wife ever existed. Odd.

[pilgrimofdark]

The Treblinka Museum did a an exhibition on the Treblinka Revolt in 2023. PDF exhibition brochure.

On page 9 is the GFH version of the smoke photo, which they attribute to Zabecki's book, where the different photo can be found.

I missed that one for the article, or I would have pointed out this additional instance of the museum's incompetence in simply looking inside Zabecki's book.

Also, I added a tiny bit more on the Pronicki page. His name first appeared in Russian, so is it possible the name was slightly different? If so, why did Zabecki use "Pronicki" throughout his book if he really knew this person and he existed?

Otherwise, I've been unable to find any mention in numerous sources I've checked of Jozef Pronicki with various spellings.

[Stubble]

I couldn't find anything either for him, or for his wife. I need to work on OCR and translation of the t series, maybe I can find a memo addressed to the Stationmaster or something and there will be a name.

[pilgrimofdark]

Looking closer at this Ostbahn "map of the eastern railway" network, there are some stations that aren't actual stops and aren't listed in the "Official pocket timetable for the General Government" (Treblinka station listed on p. 141).


Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie 29/663/0/7/1288

Malkinia-Siedlce was a single-track railroad for most of it.

Wolka Okraglik, just outside of the Treblinka camps, is indicated on the map as an "überholungsbf." -- "overtaking station." On other Ostbahn maps from the same archive, it's also indicated as a "Kreuzungsbf." -- "junction station."

So about 2.5 km east of T-II, trains were pulling to the side to allow other trains to pass/overtake them.

Zabecki's memoirs mention overtaking and the Wolka Okraglik station a few times:

However, it happened that a military train notified from Sokołów Podlaski to Małkinia was stopped somewhere at an intermediate station for truly technical reasons and was overtaken by another military train. Not informed about the train's stoppage and overtaking by another train, the traffic controller in Małkinia erroneously directed the trains.

p. 24

The overtaking stations between Malkinia and Sokolow Podlaski were Wolka Okraglik and Telaki. Kosow Lacki and Kostki also had occupied train stations.

I remember the train being stopped several times by the gendarmerie at the Wólka Okrąglik station. The train, guarded by several dozen gendarmes, was cleared of passengers, and everyone—regardless of whether they had a ticket or a pass—was sent to a labor camp.

p. 66

It doesn't look like much of a "station," just a pull-off area on the aerial photos. Zabecki doesn't say they were sent to the Treblinka labor camp, so might be a different one in the area.

There were cases where, due to lack of space, the Treblinka station did not accept trains carrying "resettlers." These trains were stopped for several hours at the Wólka Okrąglik station. This situation made it possible to observe several thousand people crammed into the wagons by wounded German soldiers "traveling from the Eastern Front in medical trains to the hospital in Sokołów Podlaski." Therefore, starting in Małkinia, it was forbidden to open doors in medical transports. Despite such great caution, it was impossible to hide the tragedy unfolding at the station from the soldiers, who saw what was happening, and upon exiting the wagons in Sokołów Podlaski, they curiously asked the Polish railway workers what these transports of people meant.

p. 69

So the medical train would be coming from the eastern front, crossing into the GG at Malkinia, and heading south to Sokolow Podlaski. They'd probably get priority on the single-track railway, necessitating other trains waiting at the overtaking station of Wolka Okraglik.

One other observation: the Treblinka station is part of the Warsaw II network. But the Treblinka camps are part of the Siedlce network, along with Wolka Okraglik. The border is south of Treblinka.

On aerial photos, the Wolka Okraglik overtaking area may be visible a little southeast of the settlement on this one: GX 12225 SG, Exposure 259. Wolka Okraglik is at the top, the left line is the railway, the right line running through the town is a paved road.