Berkman, Alan (4 Sept. 1945–5 June 2009), global AIDS activist, physician, and political prisoner, was born in Brooklyn, New York as the second of four sons of Sam Berkman, a plumbing supply store owner, and Mona Osit Berkman, a homemaker.
Raised in the small upstate New York town of Middletown during the cold war and after the Holocaust, Berkman expected to meld his intellectual and physical prowess to bring pride to his family, the Jewish community, and country. His classmates at Middletown High School voted him “the boy most likely to succeed” when he graduated in ...
