Raymond Gebiner, executive secretary of HIAS Council of Organizations and a leading figure in the Jewish labor and Workmen’s Circle movements for several decades, died of a heart attack on February 9 while vacationing in Puerto Rico. He was 81 years old.
A columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward and host of WE VD’s weekly radio show, “The Voice of HIAS,” Gebiner joined HIAS in 1950 as a Yiddish writer for the public relations department. He retired officially in 1975, but continued on as a consultant for the organization that helped him to immigrate to America from his native Poland when he was 19 years old.
Gebiner studied at Columbia University, Cooper Union and the Rand School. From 1928-45 he was a Workmen’s Circle school teacher. He went on to become the educational director of Local 60 of the ILGWU and director of the Children’s Colony at Camp Eden of the Jewish Socialist Farband.
Gebiner held a number of leadership posts in the Workmen’s Circle and was a member of the Executive Boards of the Jewish Labor Committee and the Yiddish Writers’ Union.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
