Gene Sosin, Radio Liberty Chief, Dies at 93
Gene Sosin, left, poses with fellow members of his college class at Columbia. Image by Courtesy of Columbia University
Gene Sosin, a former director of broadcasting for Radio Liberty, has died.
Sosin died earlier this month at his home in White Plains, New York. He was 93.
He spent 33 years at Radio Liberty serving in various posts. Sosin also was a writer, lecturer and specialist in Soviet affairs.
Sosin earned an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York, which he entered as a freshman at the age of 16, before joining the U.S. Navy in 1942. He spent his World War II service in Washington, D.C., with a a top-secret communications unit serving as a codebreaker and translator of Japanese.
After his discharge, Sosin wrote news and features for the Voice of America and returned to Columbia, where he earned his master’s degree and a doctorate.
In 1950, he and his wife, Gloria, participated in the Harvard Refugee Interview Project in Munich, in the American occupied zone of Germany, interviewing displaced persons from the Soviet Union who remained in the West after World War II.
Sosin was a former member of the JTA board of directors. He was elected in 1979.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years, two children and two grandchildren.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
