Eugene Sochor (M / Belgium, 1928-2015), Holocaust survivor
Eugene Sochor (M / Belgium, 1928-2015), Holocaust survivor
Robert Sochor (M / Belgium, 1939), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Belgium> <Hidden Children> -- <United States>
Biography
Eugene Sochor was born in 1928 in Antwerp, Belgium. He and his little brother Robert lost their parents during the Holocaust and survived as hidden children in Belgium. After the war they went to live with their cousins in the United States, who had been able to flee to the United States in 1941; see Ace Strip / Asriel Stripounsky''' (M / Belgium, 1936), Holocaust survivor.
Obituary
SOCHOR, Eugene Newsman and United Nations official, was a man who prevailed against the Holocaust and refused to be defined by the adverse circumstances of his childhood. In his years as chief of press at UNESCO and the International Civil Aviation Organization, he brought his resourcefulness to an international arena riven by the Middle East conflict and airborne terrorism. Sochor's mistrust of ideological extremism and his commitment to accuracy and impartiality made him a trusted source of information to the world's media. He protected the independence and integrity of his UNESCO press office from political interference when animosity towards the United States and Israel tore the agency apart. That he was able to achieve this as an American of Jewish origin was doubly remarkable. Born 1928 in Antwerp to Russian-Jewish refugees, at the age of six he lost his mother to cancer. As anti-semitism spread in the Depression years, his father lost his job as a telephone engineer and opened a tiny newsagent. When the Nazis invaded Belgium, Sochor and his father, stepmother and baby brother tried in vain to get passage to England on the beaches of Dunkirk. They were forced to make the grim trip back to Antwerp in the back of a German army truck. In 1942, mass deportations which killed half of Belgium's Jewry were underway. Fortuitously Sochor, then aged 14, was out when the Germans loaded his parents in a truck and deported them to Auschwitz. He assumed aliases and went underground for three years; hiding for 18 months in an attic together with his toddler brother Robby, unable to go outside except at night and always at the risk of discovery. A relative in the Resistance later arranged for him to hide in a home for tubercular children - the Germans were too frightened of disease to enter. In this unlikely sanctuary (which was also a cover for Resistance workers) Sochor wrote poems and plays on scraps of paper, and staged entertainments for the sick children. After the war, he paid for his passage to the United States by selling souvenir postcards of pre-war Belgium to Allied troops. During the war he had, with typical foresight, hidden the stock from his father's newsstand. He got off the boat in New York with $4.25 in his pocket and the dream of becoming a newspaperman. Self-taught in his years of hiding, Sochor completed a four-year BA in half the usual time, and three MAs, while holding down three jobs including teaching languages at Berlitz to finance his studies. His multi-lingualism astonished examiners when he answered a question on Schubert's Der Erlkönig by writing the original Goethe poem, in German, in Gothic script. He studied journalism at Columbia despite qualms about his English fluency, noting Americanisms such as 'apple-pie order' and 'she's a hot tamale' in a little notebook. Sochor's new US citizenship ironically proved to be a ticket straight back to war when he was drafted into the army bound for Korea. The educated European refugee found himself at boot camp with Mid-West farm boys. Knowing his abilities would be better employed in the reconstruction of Europe he went to the top - to General 'Wild' Bill Donovan, father of US intelligence, for whom he had briefly worked at the American Committee on United Europe. Donovan commended the services of Private Sochor to General Eisenhower's office. Just a week before his unit left for Korea, Sochor was sent to Paris, to take charge of news at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Sochor injected his reports with humor and zest for American life. He livened up one account of a top-brass conference with a Bilko-style photo of himself, posing as a hapless hat-check boy inundated with four-star generals' caps. The war over, Sochor joined the Buffalo Courier Express as its education reporter, winning several awards, and later the State Department in Washington DC. He joined UNESCO in his beloved Paris when its cultural ambitions burned bright and, in the later divisive years, shielded his press department from political interference. It was a testament to the respect in which he was held that Sochor outlasted the other Americans at the agency. He moved to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, in Montreal, managing the clamoring press after the Korean and Iranian air disasters. Sochor's book, The Politics of International Aviation, became the classic reference guide on the subject. Sochor retired to Victoria, BC, where locals set their watches by his daily routine of seafront walks and visits to the library and pool. An art and music lover, he was interested in current affairs and a keen observer of mankind's foibles. Strong-willed and of 'unconquerable mind' to the end, he was modest about his achievements and never talked of his past. He died of colon cancer on September 2. He leaves a widow Noreen Adrie, children Nicole and Daniel by his first marriage to Judith, brothers Asriel and Robert, (another brother, Joe, predeceased him) and grandchildren Sam and Courtney who brightened his later years.