Leon Prochnik

Leon Prochnik (M / Poland, 1933), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS: <Poland> <Refugees> <Lithuania><Soviet Union> <Japan> <Canada> <United States>

Biography

Leon Pochnik was born in 1933 into a Jewish family that owned in Krakow the second largest chocolate factory in Poland. Until the age of 6, he enjoyed a privileged existence. In 1939, the family fled Nazi occupied Poland. They stayed in Lithuania until they could secure a transit visa to Japan. For a year and a half, they traveled through Lithuania, Russia’s vast countryside by train, Japan and Canada before finally reaching the United States.