PRAGUE, Oct 5 (AFP) - The tiny Czech village of Horni Benesov has decided to award US Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry honorary citizenship as his ancestors hailed from the hamlet, its mayor Josef Klech said Tuesday.
Kerry's Jewish great-grandparents, Benedikt and Mathilda Kohn, and grandfather, Fritz Kohn, came from the small mountain town of 2,300 inhabitants in the east of the Czech Republic.
"We are proud to have such a connection with a US presidential candidate and want to show that the descendant of Jewish great grandparents from such a small place can go on to achieve great things," Klech told AFP.
"That's why we've decided to award the village's first ever honorary citizenship to him," he added.
Fritz Kohn changed his name to Friedrich Kerry in 1901, three years before emigrating to the United States with his wife Ida, Kerry's grandmother. He also changed his religion to become a Catholic.
Klech said the village had invited Kerry to travel to Horni Benesov to accept the honorary citizenship.
"If he is elected president I can imagine he will be too busy to come so a delegation from the village will have to travel there. But if he is not elected then I am sure that as a senator he will come within six months," he said.
A memorial park and plaque containing an image of the street where the family lived and the text of the American Constitution is also planned for a corner of the village square.
"The memorial would be a tribute to democracy," Jiri Frkal, director of the project's organisers, public relations company Media Flow, told AFP.
The project would cost between two and five million koruna (64,000 to 159,000 euros, 78,000 to 195,000 dollars). Private companies would be asked to meet the cost, he added.