Werner Michael Blumenthal

Werner Michael Blumenthal was born to a Jewish family in Oranienburg, Germany. His parents were Rose Valerie and Ewald Blumenthal, who owned a dress shop. He also had an older sister, Stefanie. After the rise of the Nazi party to power in 1933, and the increasing persecution of Jews, the Blumenthals began to fear for their lives. In 1938, the Gestapo forced their way into their home early one morning, arrested Ewald, and took him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. His wife hastily sold all their household possessions and was able to win her husband's release. They were also forced to sell their store to their managing saleswoman for practically nothing.
With their little remaining money, Blumenthal's mother bought tickets for the family to Shanghai, China. They left the country in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Although they expected to remain only briefly, after Japan occupied Shanghai, the Blumenthals were confined to the Shanghai Ghetto along with 20,000 other Jewish refugees, for the next eight years. Blumenthal's education during this time was haphazard; however, he learned English during a brief period attending a British school, and also learned to speak some Chinese, French, and Portuguese. 

When the war in the Pacific ended in August 1945, American troops entered Shanghai. Blumenthal got a job as a warehouse helper with the U.S. Air Force. By 1947, he and his sister, after much effort, obtained visas to the USA.

With limited education and no funds, he did his best to make something of himself. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951 with a B.S. degree in Business Administration, and later received a Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he also taught economics from 1953 to 1956. He then joined Crown Cork International Corporation, where he rose to be Vice President and Director. In the 1960s, he entered politics and public service and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from 1961 until 1967, advising Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on trade. Following a 10-year career as President and then Chairman of the Board of Bendix International, he was tapped by President Jimmy Carter to be U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, a position he held from 1977 to 1979. In 1980, he returned to the business sector and joined Burroughs Corporation as Vice Chairman, then became Chairman of the Board a year later. After a merger into the Unisys Corporation in 1986, he became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He remained at Unisys until his retirement in 1990. He has served as Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin since December 1997. In 1999, he received the Leo Baeck Medal for his humanitarian work promoting tolerance and social justice. He and his wife Barbara Bennett have one son together and he has three daughters from his previous marriage to Margaret Eileen Polley. In 2010, Secretary Blumenthal published a memoir, In achtzig Jahren um die Welt. Mein Leben (Around the World in Eight Years: My Life). He is also the author of From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century (2015) and The Invisible Wall: The Mystery of the Germans and the Jews (1998).