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)