By Thomas Olson ∙ October 11, 2026
Holocaust witness testimony is often treated as a direct record of experience, as though the testimony itself was the endpoint of historical inquiry. But early witness accounts were produced within particular social and documentary settings, each of which had its own procedures, objectives, and constraints that left their mark on what survivors said and how…
By Thomas Olson ∙ August 20, 2026
Chad S. A. Gibbs, Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance. The University of Wisconsin Press, 2026. Hardcover, 214 pages, notes, bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-0-299-35600-2. $79.95 hardcover, also available Open Access. The prisoner revolt at the Treblinka II “extermination camp” has been the subject of numerous studies by historians. According to…
By Thomas Olson ∙ August 8, 2026
Finding Treblinka: Forensic and Archaeological Discoveries by Caroline Sturdy Colls. Cornell University Press, 2026. Paperback, 464 pages, notes, index, ISBN: 978-1-5017-8650-1. $33.95. The last few years have seen a minor boom in Treblinka scholarship. In 2024, Jacob Flaws’s Spaces of Treblinka and the Treblinka Museum’s Treblinka Warns and Reminds! were released. This year has already…
By Thomas Olson ∙ May 9, 2026
Holocaust eyewitness testimonies are often treated as relatively stable documents that can be dated, compared and used as evidence for historical reconstruction. But what happens when a single testimony exists in multiple versions, bears clear traces of editorial intervention, and resists secure dating? This article argues that such problems are not merely factual inconveniences. They…
By Thomas Olson ∙ January 9, 2026
Franciszek Ząbecki was a Polish railway worker during the Second World War at the Treblinka train station a few kilometers north of the two Treblinka camps. A number of myths have grown up around him, including that he was stationmaster during the war, that he took a photograph during the prisoner uprising at the Treblinka…
By Thomas Olson ∙ December 31, 2025
This paper utilizes developing technology to produce a new English translation of Jankiel Wiernik’s A Year in Treblinka and critically compares it to the 1979 English translation published by Alexander Donat. It particularly focuses on the passages that Donat selectively omitted. By comparing the texts, it highlights discrepancies and explores the implications of these alterations….
By Thomas Olson ∙ September 22, 2025
This article examines Jankiel Wiernik’s activities in Warsaw, Poland, in the years preceding the Second World War. The claim that Jankiel Wiernik was not an experienced writer before recording his experience of the Treblinka camp is called into question by newspaper reports from Warsaw and around Poland highlighting Wiernik’s involvement in writing communist propaganda for…
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