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Ewald
Blumenthal received an iron cross for fighting under Kaiser William
II in World War I. Years later, when the Nazis emerged from the
ashes of the Weimar Republic, Blumenthal was arrested and interned
at Buchenwald concentration camp for two years.
He managed to escape, and later fled with
his family to Shanghai, China in 1939. Ewald’s son, W. Michael
Blumenthal, was 10 years old when he left Buchenwald — where
more than 55,000 Jews were exterminated between 1937 and 1945. Michael
would later travel the corridors of City College of San Francisco
and the White House.
He began his American journey as a City
College student in the ‘40s, and became U.S. Secretary of
the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
“San Francisco was a kaleidoscopic
cross-section of America, and here I was following a long line of
the American immigration experience,” said Blumenthal, now
80-years old. “City College was my ticket into the United
States as an immigrant, a refugee and a new American.”
In January, Blumenthal was a guest speaker
at Herbst Theatre as part of City College’s 70th Anniversary
celebration. On a stage set that resembled a family living room,
Robert Rosenthal, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle,
asked Blumenthal about his education and career. The audience, which
included Chancellor Philip R. Day, Jr., members of the board of
trustees and invited faculty and staff, sat enthralled as Blumenthal
told his story.
“Having a distinguished alumnus
like Mr. Blumenthal is a source of pride for our institution, the
faculty and staff,” Chancellor Day said. “Students can
learn from him that discipline, hard work and dedication can get
you to where you want to be in terms of success and quality of life.
Mr. Blumenthal overcame great obstacles and many challenges along
his pathway to success.”
In China, the Blumenthals lived in poverty.
When the Japanese occupied Shanghai, they herded the city’s
Jewish refugees into ghettos, where the family resided for eight
years. They later learned the gruesome details of the Holocaust,
at which point Ewald and his wife, Valerie, decided to sever their
ties with Germany.
Michael and his sister immigrated to the
United States in 1947. They had about $60 between them when they
moved into a Tenderloin hotel in San Francisco.
“You can arrive without any money,
without knowing anybody and you were not judged on who you were,”
Blumenthal said. “People were just interested in if I could
do the work or not. I learned that the principle underlying our
country is the equality of opportunity.”
At age 22, he enrolled at City College
in the spring of 1948, just four months after his arrival. He didn’t
have a high school diploma, and his formal education ended at the
age of 16.
“City College took everyone at the
time,” he said. “It was free of charge and didn’t
cost anything.”
Blumenthal attended classes that were
transferable to institutions like UC Berkeley.
“I’d go in the morning and
rush off to a job after,” he said. A couple of his jobs included
working as an elevator operator and a ticket-taker at a Mission
District movie theater. “I must have studied somehow because
I got decent grades.”
Blumenthal chose to major in international
affairs and economics.
“Most kids don’t have any
idea about what they want to do when they get to college, but that
wasn’t true for me,” he said. “I chose international
affairs because I had seen in Germany so much poor management and
so much tyranny by government. I chose economics because I had seen
so much poverty and injustice in China. Those were my interests
from the start.”
After three semesters, Blumenthal transferred
to UC Berkeley, where he went on to earn two master’s degrees.
He got a Ph.D. in economics at Princeton University, where he taught
until 1957.
In 1961, Blumenthal became President John
F. Kennedy’s deputy assistant secretary of state for economic
affairs, and later an ambassador when he served as one of the President’s
representatives for trade negotiations.
Blumenthal returned to private life in
1967, working at the Bendix Corporation, where he rose to chairman
and CEO.
In 1977, he became the 64th Secretary
of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.
“It is a quintessential American
story. For that I am proud, but it’s not because I’m
so brilliant,” he said with a laugh. “One thing was
built on the other.
“We’re all dealt a certain
hand of cards,” he said. “What we make of what we have
is up to us, and the amount of luck we get. Obviously, I’ve
made my share of mistakes, but I played my hand as well as I could
and I was lucky.”
Blumenthal became director of Berlin’s
Jewish Museum in 1997. He considers his work there his most enduring.
In 1999 he published his first book, “The Invisible Wall:
Germans and Jews, A Personal Exploration.”
Although he is retired, he still serves
as the museum’s director and sits on a few boards, including
the International Rescue Committee.
“It’s a perfect life if you’re
healthy and still have all your marbles,” he said from Princeton,
N.J. where he lives with his wife, Barbara. They have a son, and
Blumenthal has three daughters from a previous marriage.
He is also writing a second book that
gives a personal history of the 20th century.
“It’s a very massive and foolish
undertaking for an old man,” he said, “but I am far
along with it.”
E-mail Alex K. Fong at alexkfong@yahoo.com
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