W. Michael Blumenthal fled Nazi Germany as a boy and found safety in Shanghai. On Saturday he visited the museum honoring the city’s 20,000 Jewish refugees and said this trip is his last. “Shanghai is in my head and in my blood.”
W. Michael Blumenthal was 13 when he reached Shanghai in 1939, one of roughly 20,000 Jews who fled Nazi persecution for a city that asked no visas of them. On Saturday, at 100 years old, the former U.S. Treasury secretary walked again through the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and said it would be his last visit, China Daily reported.
“I’m overwhelmed by the beautiful museum. It brings back many memories,” Blumenthal told the newspaper. “I am 100 years old; in Chinese age, 101. I’ve been to Shanghai five or six times and I wanted to visit one more time. This is the last time. I lived here for eight years. Shanghai is in my head and in my blood.”
Shanghai was one of the few places on earth open to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, and the museum in the city’s Hongkou district, built around the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue, tells that story. Blumenthal spent his youth in the refugee district before immigrating to the United States. He went on to serve as the 64th U.S. Treasury secretary, from 1977 to 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, and in 1997 returned to Germany to help establish the Jewish Museum Berlin, directing it until 2014.
He told China Daily his view of those Shanghai years has changed. “While living here, I was angry, thought I was wasting my time,” he said. “But now I know that my time in Shanghai was the most important time of my life, because I learned about hardship, what people can do when their backs are against the wall.”
Blumenthal also spoke of his Chinese neighbors. “It was also a difficult period for China. There were far more Chinese refugees in Shanghai than Jewish ones,” he said. “Yet when we were forced to live in the midst of the Chinese people, they did not object or say ‘get out’. They lived as our neighbors harmoniously. For that, I am very grateful.”
His daughter, Jill Borgeson, who accompanied him, said the visit brought her father’s history to life. “In those places, he comes alive, and memories start flooding back,” she said.
Chen Jian, the museum’s director, said Blumenthal shared new details of his family’s daily life in Shanghai that will enrich the museum’s record. The museum’s commemoration wall of refugee names has grown from 13,732 names in 2014 to about 19,000 today, Chen said.
Blumenthal, asked about the present, kept to the long view. “The United States and China are both great, powerful countries. We must learn to get along,” he said. “Our two countries have far more interests in common than what separates us.”
Sources and reporting note
China Daily: Ex-US treasury secretary, 100, visits Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum
VINnews: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, 100, Returns to Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum
Reporting note: the quotes and the account of the visit come from China Daily’s interview with W. Michael Blumenthal, as also reported by VINnews. Biographical details match the public record of his life.
More from JewsyNews
Explore News Watch or browse the JewsyNews Store. Our own designs are sold through memNara on Etsy. Shopping there is one way to support our work. Checkout happens on the seller’s site, separate from our reporting.