Kerry relatives killed in Holocaust

[Herschel]

Since Sen. John Kerry discovered a year ago that his father's father was Jewish-born, he has struggled over whether and how to talk about his Jewish background.

The roots are surprising for a Massachusetts politician with an Irish name and Catholic upbringing. Kerry did not know the extent of his Jewish roots until a year ago when a genealogist in Vienna, hired by The Boston Globe, discovered that Kerry's paternal grandfather, Frederick Kerry, a converted Catholic, was actually born Fritz Kohn to Jewish parents in what was Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic. Kerry, 60, has known for about 16 years that his paternal grandmother was born Jewish as Ida Lowe and converted to Catholicism.

Sunday, the Vienna genealogist, Felix Gundacker, posted new findings on his Web site that the Nazis killed two of Ida Lowe's siblings -- a sister in the Treblinka concentration camp, and a brother in Theresienstadt, a Czechoslovakian ghetto that held Jews before they were taken to camps.

"I'm very touched by the knowledge that one of my relatives was in the Holocaust," Kerry said in an interview last night. "It gives an even greater personal sense of connection that is very real and very touching. It makes you wonder how horrible their lives must have been."

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usroot0301,0,2821800.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

Kerry has been touched by the greatest tragedy in human history. Hopefully, this will solidify his support for Israel.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Herschel]

2. How dare you

Israel represents a safe haven for Jews. The alternative to a strong Israel is a second Holocaust.

[Resistance]

3. How dare I what?

:shrug:

[meti57b]

4. If only we had Israel ten years sooner, ....

perhaps the lives of millions of people could have been saved.

[Resistance]

6. it is too bad

that Israel become an off-shore military base for U.S. imperialism, and never showed any regard for Palestinian life, don't you think?

[Herschel]

7. If Israel had no regard for Palestinain life

There would be no Palestinian life.

[Resistance]

9. no

If Israel had no regard for Palestinian life, then Israel would continue to steal Palestinian land, bulldoze homes, murder civilians, rob banks, shoot kids in the back, and generally run around inflicting misery - as is the case today.

[Herschel]

10. If Israel had no regard for Palestinian life

what would prevent the liquidation of the Palestinian population?

[Resistance]

11. Just because you show no regard for another group

doesn't mean you decide to wipe them off the face of the earth. Israel's main intention is to steal as much land as possible. In the process of doing so, they've never shown any regard for the lives of the people already living on that land: the Palestinians.

[lefty_mcduff]

15. What a concept.

"We have loads of regard for Palestinian life.
We only kill x% of them".

Nice.

[meti57b]

13. NO, I don't think that Israel become an off-shore military base .....

for U.S. imperialism, and never showed any regard for Palestinian life.

[_Jumper_]

14. Who is next?

Who is the next minority to be killed in a genocide? Shouldn't we make an effort to create homelands for the Kurds, Sikhs, Roma, etc. too, in order to prevent them from being killed in a genocide?

[Gimel]

5. This statement

is disturbing. Israel was born from the Holocaust.

[Resistance]

8. However noble were the goals of early Zionists

That nobility has been completely lost, in favor of stealing Palestinian land and murdering anyone who gets in the way

[Gimel]

26. Purity

exists only in heaven. The Zionists were human beings who suffered beyond belief. Many had displaced personalities, no doubt. But judging the whole by those unfortunates is also unworthy. Israel was meant to be and has been created in as humanely as possible way.

On edit:

The real indiginous people of Israel, the Druze, the Benouin and Moslem and Christian Arabs, as well as the Jews live together peacefully.

[Red_Storm]

12. "the greatest tragedy in human history"

Don't know much history, do you ?

[GabysPoppy]

16. Maybe for you it wasn't

Some may disagree with you

[Forkboy]

17. If you're going strictly by body count

then you're right,the holocaust isn't the greatest tragedy.

However,if you factor in the intent,efficiency,and just plain evilness of the deathcamps it's hard to argue against the fact that it was indeed the greatest tragedy in human history.

[Resistance]

18. the current AIDS crisis in Africa

might just be the worst - but the Nazi Holocaust is definitely tough competition.

[mobuto]

19. Very different

the AIDS crisis wasn't deliberately orchestrated. The Jewish Holocaust was. The first will result in more deaths, but there isn't anything like the same moral complicity as existed with regard to the second.

[Resistance]

20. Not to quibble too much

-- this is more of a comment than anything else -- because I'll readily accept either as being labelled *the* worst tragedy in human history - but you mentioned moral complicity, and that got me thinking. There was a complicity amongst Germans, you know, they knew what was going on and didn't do anything and just ignored it as it went on. Well can't the same be said of the rest of us, in regard to the African AIDS crisis? I mean, we know it's going on, we have the capacity to do something, yet we just sit around and do nothing.

What I'm saying is, I don't think there has to be a deliberate human orchestration for the *rest of us* to be held equally responsible.

[mobuto]

21. Well, the Germans did more than just sit around

They went out and killed twelve million people, six million of whom were Jews.

I mean, we know it's going on, we have the capacity to do something, yet we just sit around and do nothing.

I certainly agree that the US and the Western democracies haven't done nearly enough to combat third-world AIDS, but we have done a lot. But it isn't remotely equivalent to complicity with the Holocaust.

By the way, I'm not interested in proclaiming which tragedy is the "worst in history" either. That's just asinine. I think the element of human complicity is higher for the Holocaust for the fact that it was a human-caused event.

[Resistance]

22. Sorry, I wasn't clear

I meant to differentiate between the German people, and the Nazi orchestrators of the Holocaust. The comparison I'm making is in the peoples who, in each event, stood by while a great tragedy was going on that they were aware of yet did nothing to prevent.

[Red_Storm]

23. So, I guess you and others have not heard about...............

the systematic genocide of the Native people in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean......or does that not count or matter?

[Forkboy]

24. I have heard about it

I think I saw a tv movie or something once :eyes:

[Herschel]

25. Some would suggest

the massive killing of unborn children is another human tragedy.