Individual Details

Frederick A. Kerry (born Fritz Kohn), was born on May 10, 1873 in the town of Horni Benesov, Austria-Hungary (in what is now the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic), and grew up in Mödling, Austria (a small town near Vienna). His wife Ida (née Loewe) was born in Budapest, Hungary. They were both German-speaking Jews. But in 1901, Fritz Kohn converted from Judaism to Catholicism and changed his name to Frederick Kerry. His wife Ida also converted at the same time. They then immigrated to the United States, arriving at Ellis Island in 1905. They raised their three children, including Senator John Kerry's father, as Catholics. A Czech historian believes that Ida was a descendant of Sinai Loew, one of three older brothers of Rabbi Judah Loew (1525-August 22, 1609), a famous Kabbalist, philosopher and talmudist known as the Maharal of Prague. Two of Ida's siblings, Otto Loewe and Jenni Loewe, died in the Nazi extermination camps (Theresienstadt and Treblinka, respectively), after being deported from Vienna in 1942. Frederick A. Kerry himself committed suicide in a Boston hotel on November 23, 1921.

Birth	10 May 1873	Bennisch, Austria (now Horni Benešov, Severomoravsky, Czech Republic)
Death	23 Nov 1921	Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Alt name		Fritz Kohn

Spouse	Ida Lowe (1877 - 1960)
Child	Richard John Kerry (1915 - 2000)