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?