"A long obscured branch on John Kerry’s family tree; More Jewish forebears, more tragedy" by Michael Kranish | Globe Staff, October 13, 2013
CAMBRIDGE — A journey of discovery that veered from the magical to the tragic. The connection to John F. Kerry....
The details of this lost family connection fill in a missing piece of a puzzle that first took shape 10 years ago, when a Globe reporter researching a profile informed Kerry that he had an Austrian grandfather who changed the family name from Kohn to Kerry and their religion from Jewish to Catholic. At the time, Kerry said he knew nothing about this paternal history, and the family has spent years tracking down more information. Indeed, Kerry’s brother, Cameron, is slated to visit the Czech Republic this week in an effort to learn more about the family’s Jewish roots.
As it turns out, some of the answers may be found in Cambridge....
It is, according to those involved, a vivid reminder of how the Holocaust led to so many lost connections in the world, mostly between the anonymous and the unknown....
I don't need to be reminded anymore, thanks.
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It begins with the family patriarch. Benedict Kohn was a beer maker who lived during the late 19th century in a town called Bennisch in the Austrian Empire, which today is known as Horni Benesov in the Czech Republic. Of the 4,200 residents, Kohn was among the few dozen who were Jewish.
The beer maker’s first wife, Rosa Winter, had a son named Bernhard Kohn. It is from this family that Joan Wheelis descends — a family the Kerrys had known nothing about.
After the beer maker’s first wife died, he married Mathilde Frankel, and they had a son named Fritz Kohn — who would be Kerry’s grandfather.
In time, the half-brothers, Bernhard and Fritz, decided that their Kohn name and their Jewish heritage made it too difficult to advance in the many anti-Semitic quarters of the Austrian Empire.
Bernhard changed the family name to Kaulbach.
But Fritz, according to family lore, dropped a pencil on a European map, where it landed on County Kerry in Ireland, and so he changed his name to Kerry and changed his religion to Catholic. Fritz wrote on an application that he wanted to change his name because “it is so typically Jewish” and he believed “that the name will hinder his career in the military.”
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Fritz Kohn, having changed his name to Frederick Kerry, immigrated to the United States and, for a time, was a successful businessman. His wife, the former Ida Lowe, gave birth in Boston to Richard Kerry, who was John Kerry’s father. But Frederick Kerry’s business dealings went sour, and in 1921, as the Globe reported at the time, he committed suicide in a bathroom of the Copley Plaza Hotel.
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In the 10 years since the Globe informed the Kerrys of their Jewish ancestry, they have spent considerable time learning more about their roots. The most deeply affected has been John Kerry’s younger brother, Cameron, who married a Jewish woman in 1983 and converted to the faith. He has undertaken research of his own....
Hey, it is who the paper is being written of, by, and for.
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