Stern Freed from Labor Camp…

Dr. Mikhail Stern, who was arrested in May, 1974 and sentenced in December, 1974 to eight years in a labor camp on charges of “bribery and swindling,” was released yesterday by the Ukrainian Supreme Court on “humanitarian grounds,” it was reported today by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ). The court stated that it had taken into consideration the 58-year-old endocrinologist’s ill health, age and the fact that he was a “first offender.”

The SSSJ and UCSJ said Stern was suffering in the labor camp from tuberculosis, ulcers, bladder stones and spinal and heart disorders. A month ago, he was placed in a punishment cell for 10 days for writing a letter which was never delivered to his wife, Ida, describing the horrors of the camp conditions, the two groups reported.

“Dr. Stern was a scapegoat in the classic sense,” the SSSJ and UCSJ said. “He was tried because his sons had applied for exit visas to go to Israel. It was a clear warning to all Jews in the Ukraine who might seek exit.” Furthermore they said, his conviction followed a two-week “kangaroo court” trial in Vinnitsa in which the sentence was already common knowledge before the proceedings ended and at which almost every prosecution witness recanted his testimony on the stand. “The release of Dr. Stern vindicates the widespread Western campaign on his behalf,” the SSSJ and UCSJ said.

Stern’s release came 11 days before sympathizers were to have held an international tribunal on the case. Among those who were expected to participate were Jean-Paul Sartre, whose committee for the release of Stern included 50 Nobel Prize winners, exiled Soviet dissidents Viktor Nekrasov, Alexander Galich, Leonid Plyushch and Stern’s two sons.