John Kerry
John Kerry · Philosophy & Social Sciences
U.S. Secretary of State (2013-17) who negotiated the Iran deal and signed the Paris accord; grandson of Fritz Kohn and Ida Löwe, Jews converted in 1901 — a fact he learned only in 2003.
11 décembre 1943, Aurora, Colorado, États-Unis
Boston, Washington
John Kerry is recognized among Jewish contributors to Philosophy & Social Sciences — U.S. Secretary of State (2013-17) who negotiated the Iran deal and signed the Paris accord; grandson of Fritz Kohn and Ida Löwe, Jews converted in 1901 — a fact he learned only in 2003.
Kohn become Kerry, said plainly
His paternal grandfather was born Fritz Kohn on 10 May 1873 in Horní Benešov, a Moravian town then in the Austrian Empire, son of Benedikt Kohn, a master brewer; his grandmother was Ida Löwe, of a Jewish family of Budapest. Fleeing Vienna's antisemitism, Fritz changed the name to Kerry in 1900; the couple was baptized Roman Catholic in 1901 and emigrated to America, where Frederick Kerry made and lost fortunes in Boston.
John, an altar boy raised entirely Catholic, learned all of it only in January 2003, when the Boston Globe's genealogists showed him the Czech church ledgers — and learned at the same time that Ida's brother Otto and sister Jenni had been murdered in Nazi camps. This directory admits him by the ascendance route — two grandparents born Jewish — and says so plainly, as its rule requires.
The soldier and the senator
Born on 11 December 1943 in Aurora, Colorado, he commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam and came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts — then became one of the war's most famous veteran critics. Senator for Massachusetts from 1985 to 2013, he was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, losing narrowly to George W. Bush.
The diplomat
As Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017 he negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement and signed the Paris climate accord for the United States. From 2021 to 2024 he served as America's first Special Presidential Envoy for Climate — the searcher for peace, as the Jewish press called him when his family's story came out, still at the table.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Wikipedia ; Boston Globe (2003) ; Tribune Juive
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U.S. Secretary of State (2013-17) who negotiated the Iran deal and signed the Paris accord; grandson of Fritz Kohn and Ida Löwe, Jews converted in 1901 — a fact he learned only in 2003.
Source: Wikipedia ; Boston Globe (2003) ; Tribune Juive
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