'' with the article 'The West Saved Stern' Stern was born in a Jewish family in a small Ukrainian town of
Zhmerynka. In 1944 he received his doctor degree, and in 1947 organized in
Chernovtsy the first endocrinological center in Ukraine. In 1952 he moved to
Vinnitsa. The same year he was discharged because of the
Doctors' plot, an imaginary conspiracy of Jewish doctors to poison Soviet leaders. He was reinstated in 1954, a year after Stalin's death. In 1963, Stern became a section head in a newly established endocrinological center in Vinnitsa. In 1977, an international tribunal was organized in Stern's defense in Amsterdam, which was attended by
Simone de Beauvoir and
Jean-Paul Sartre. Stern was released a week before the opening of the tribunal. He immigrated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where in 1979 he wrote a book describing taboos, sexual ignorance, and suppression of sexual freedoms in the Soviet Union. The book documents Stern's professional communications with patients. Stern's medical files were confiscated during his trial, and therefore the book is mostly written from memory, supported by photographs and personal letters. Stern died in June, 2005 in Amsterdam from injuries sustained in an attack by burglars in his apartment two months earlier. == In popular culture ==