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Kerry’s roots
Posted at: Friday, March 5, 2004, 01:38 AM
That John Kerry, a Catholic, has Jewish roots on his father’s side has been widely known for a year. New on Thursday was confirmation by archivists at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial that two of his relatives — his grandmother’s brother and sister — were victims of Nazi genocide.
Archivists said Otto Loewe died in the Theresienstadt ghetto in what was then Czechoslovakia, and Jenny Loewe vanished in the Treblinka death camp in Poland.
Kerry’s paternal grandfather emigrated to the United States from what is now the Czech Republic, changing his name to Kerry from Kohn. His grandmother, whose maiden name was Ida Loewe, also emigrated and converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
— Staff writer Matthew C. Quinn and wire services.
