An exhibition on the experience of Jewish refugees
who fled to Shanghai to escape persecution during World War?II
opened at the city’s former Ohel Moshe Synagogue yesterday, now the
Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial Hall.
Michael Blumenthal, a 79-year-old former refugee
who was US treasury secretary under President Jimmy Carter and now
director of Europe's largest Jewish museum in Berlin, was 12 when
he came to Shanghai.
When the US troops entered the city, the
19-year-old Blumenthal got a job with the US Air Force as a
warehouseman. In July 1945, he worked on the front, helping to
carry casualties off the battlefield.
Blumenthal said he hopes to bring the exhibition to
China's
National Museum on January 27, the day set aside by a recent UN
conference to commemorate the Nazi Holocaust.
It is part of a number of events held in Shanghai
this week that have brought former refugees and their old Chinese
neighbors together in the city.
Shanghai received nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees
during WWII. Many arrived thanks to Ho Feng-shan, the former
Chinese consul general in Vienna, Austria, who issued thousands of
visas for them.
(China Daily November 11, 2005)
