Joseph Kushner

Kushner was born Joseph Berkowitz on 10 October 1922 in Navahrudak (Polish: Nowogródek), in what was then eastern Poland. His parents were Chana and Moshe Berkowitz.[2] In August 1945, he married Reichel "Rae" Kushner (27 February 1923 – 2004) in Budapest.[1][3] Rae Kushner was also from the city of Navahrudak, and is remembered for accompanying her brother and up to 360 others to escape through a tunnel from the Navahrudak Ghetto during the Holocaust. Joseph took his wife’s last name upon marriage.[1] Charles Kushner was the chief benefactor of the Museum of Jewish Resistance.[1] In the aftermath of the war, Navahrudak was transferred from Poland to the Byelorussian SSR of the Soviet Union under territorial changes dictated by the Potsdam Agreement.[4] Rae Kushner and her spouse immigrated to the United States as Sh'erit ha-Pletah from the Soviet Union in 1949.[1]

Kushner worked as a carpenter in New Jersey eventually running his own business which was funded by the G.I. Bill and later by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.[5]

The Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, both in Livingston, New Jersey, are named in their honour.[6]

Kushner was the father of Esther Schulder, Murray Kushner and Charles Kushner, and the grandfather of Jared Kushner, Joshua Kushner, and Marc Kushner.

• Kushner family