Shanghai 'ghetto' laden with memories

For Michael Blumenthal, the former secretary of the United States treasury, the craggy ground of the small courtyard at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum offers an emotional metaphor.

Paved with stones salvaged from a renovation project in the are an early a decade ago, it is intended to evoke the trials and tribulations endured by Europe's Jewish population during World War II.It was the place where, in the eight years between 1939 and 1947, a young Blumenthal practiced his religious faith with his family.

On Saturday, Blumenthal, now 89, paid another visit to the museum-perhaps his last-immersing himself once more in memories. Seventy-six years ago, 13-year-old Michael arrived in Shanghai with his parents and elder sister, having fled from Germany, where he had been born but where life had become impossible for Jews.