Among New Jersey’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver is one whose story moved from the shadows of Nazi death camps to the rare echelons of American power and prestige and who is back in Germany helping the world understand why he fled, according to a report in the Asbury Park Press.

The report said W. Michael Blumenthal, 82, lives in Princeton and Berlin, Germany. He served in the Democratic administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s and then Jimmy Carter in the 1980s.

Werner Michael Blumenthal was born near Berlin in 1926 and at 13 saw his family sell all its possessions to buy his father’s freedom from a concentration camp, then flee to Shanghai.

Seven years later, as a brighter dawn followed World War II, the family arrived in the United States, where Blumenthal took degrees from Berkeley and Princeton, then moved on to be Kennedy’s deputy assistant secretary of state for economic affairs and Johnson’s deputy special representative for trade negotiations.

Moving slalom in and out of the corporate, government and university habitats, Blumenthal became Carter’s treasury secretary, where he served from 1977 to 1979.

He said he is not a latecomer to the Obama camp.

“I have been a supporter of Obama since the beginning,” said Blumenthal.

Blumenthal, at 82, is not the oldest Jersey delegate here. That bouquet goes to New Jersey’s senior U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, who is 84. Former Gov. Brendan Byrne, 84, and Essex County Democratic chairman Philip Thigpen, 82, are also older.

APP