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.
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.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
