Léon Lewkowicz

Léon Lewkowicz

Holocaust Survivor Léon Lewkowicz, carried the Olympic Fame in Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Leon was born in 1930 in Lodz, Poland.

When he was 10 years old in 1940 the Germans forced him and all the Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto.

When he was 14 years old, in 1944, the Germans deported Leon to the Auschwitz Death Camp in German-Occupied Poland.

He not only survived the Selection and escaped the Gas Chambers, but also the Death March from Auschwitz in January 1945.

He arrived in France in June 1945 when he was 15 years old and weighed 72 lbs.

Leon was one of 426 Children, (alongside Elie Wiesel and Meir Lau) who were brought into the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a French Jewish Children’s Aid Society.

It was there that he met Maurice Brauch, also a Holocaust Survivor and an Athletic Coach who organized Intramural Competitions.

At the age of 19, Leon became the Strongest Man in France and in 1955 he became the French Weightlifting Champion.

He was unable to participate in the 1956 Olympic Games at that time because he was still not a French Citizen.

In 2024, at the age of 94 Leon carried the Olympic Torch from the Bir-hakeim Metro Station to the Vel d’Hiv Memorial Garden (the Garden commemorates the 4,000 Parisian Jewish Children murdered by the Vichy French and the Germans during World War 2.)

Léon Lewkowicz was never able to participate in the Olympic Games as an Athlete because he was Stateless, but he was made a small part of the 2024 Paris Olympics.