Pinkhos Proshchitskii was born in 1901 in Minsk. He took part in the civil war in Russia, first as a member of the Red underground in Minsk, then as a Red Army soldier. After the civil war, Proshchitskii moved to Moscow, where he studied economics and journalism at Moscow University. For seven years in the 1930s, he worked as a political commissar and an editor of the local newspaper at a large stock-raising sovkhoz (state-owned agricultural farm) in western Siberia. In 1938, during the major purge of the NKVD (Soviet political police), Proshchitskii was recommended for a high post as a permanent worker of this institution. Proshchitskii refused, not so much out of aversion to the NKVD, as out of prudence, and remained with his sovkhoz. In the same year, an order for his arrest was issued by the NKVD but, due to the intercession of friends within this institution, he was not arrested. In the late 1930s, he returned to Moscow, where he taught at an agricultural school that trained personnel in animal husbandry.
In July 1941, with the start of the Soviet-German war, Proshchitskii volunteered for the 4th Infantry Division of the People's Militia. This remarkable division was referred to as "a division of Moscow intelligentsia" because many teachers from the universities and others institutions of higher education, as well as scholars and scientists served in it. One of the divisions members was the renowned specialist in Shakespeare and English literature in general, the Jewish professor Aleksandr Anikst (famous for his lectures at the Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature, where he lectured in English). Proshchitskii became a political commissar, then a senior political commissar, with the rank of major, in the political department of his division. However, his being a commissar did not mean that he never saw active service: in October-December 1941, when his division took part in the defense of Moscow, and then in the counter-offensive from Moscow westward, he fought in many battles. He received an Order of the Red Star in December 1941 for his part, as the commander of a unit, in the successful defense, over the course of three days, of a brick factory, which thwarted enemy's breakthrough to the Soviet rear. After having been awarded this Order, Proshchitskii returned to combat. On the very next day, the order saved his life – by protecting his chest from a fragment of an enemy mortar shell. After that, Proshchitskii wore this order with its visibly damaged enamel.
In 1943, Pinkhos Proshchitskii received his second order, as an outstanding commissar. In June 1943, the 42-year-old commissar was transferred to the political education department of the 3rd Belorussian Front.
After the war, Proshchitskii taught in the faculty of journalism at Moscow University. In 1961, the book The People's Militia of Moscow being prepared by one of the city's publishers. A chapter about the senior political commissar Proshchitskii had been written for this book but this chapter was omitted from the final version of the book. He only merited being mentioned in one sentence in the chapter "The Defense of a Brick Factory," where he was characterized as "a man of extraordinary courage."
Proshchitskii died in 1957.
