Dr. Benjamin A. Cohen, former Undersecretary of the United Nations, a Chilean diplomat who served as a member of the executive secretariat of the preparatory commission of the United Nations when the world organization was founded in 1945, died here yesterday. He was 63.
Born in Concepcion, Chile, the son of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants, Alberto and Rebecca Gallerstein Cohen, he entered journalism after studies in Chile and in the United States. He joined his country’s diplomatic service in the early Nineteen Twenties. When the United Nations had passed from its preparatory stages to actual functioning, he became, under former Secretary General Trygve Lie, the first Assistant Secretary General in charge of the Department of Public information.
As head of the UN information department, he became known to and popular with diplomatic correspondents and radio-television editors throughout the world. In the present UN administration, under Dag Hammarskjold, he served as Undersecretary for the Department of Trusteeship. He resigned his UN post a year ago, and rejoined the Chilean UN delegation with the rank of Ambassador. He also became a full-time member of the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University at Rutherford, N.J.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
