Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Gene Sosin, Radio Liberty Chief, Dies at 93

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.

Gene Sosin, left, poses with fellow members of his college class at Columbia. Image by Courtesy of Columbia University

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.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.