Was Richard C. Holbrooke Jewish?

Yes, American diplomat Richard Holbrooke was a Jew.

Holbrooke was born in 1941, in New York City, to Dan Holbrooke and Trudi Kearl (née Moos). Holbrooke’s mother's Jewish family fled Hamburg in 1933 for Buenos Aires. She was a potter and said she was an atheist. His father also was said to have been an atheist. The family attended Quaker meetings.

Holbrooke’s father was born of Russian Jewish parents in Warsaw. He changed his name to Holbrooke when he immigrated to the United States in the 1930s. His original name is not known.

Holbrooke graduated from Scarsdale High School, from Brown University, and held a post-graduate fellowship at Princeton University.

During the final weeks of his term as ambassador to the United Nations (1999-2001), Holbrooke secured consultative status for Hadassah, the Jewish women's service organization, overcoming objections from Arab delegations.

JTA reported that, "He became more interested in his Judiasm when his third wife, and widow, Kati Marton, raised a Roman Catholic, discovered that her own parents were Hungarian Jews who hid their identity."