Rep. Tom Lantos, survivor of Holocaust, moral voice
WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Lantos, 80, who escaped the Nazis and grew up to become a forceful voice for human rights all over the world, died yesterday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.
WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Lantos, 80, who escaped the Nazis and grew up to become a forceful voice for human rights all over the world, died yesterday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.
The California Democrat, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, disclosed last month that he had cancer of the esophagus.
At his side were his wife of nearly six decades, Annette; his two daughters; and many of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Rep. Lantos, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was serving his 14th term in Congress. He had said he would not seek reelection in his San Francisco-area district.
Rep. Lantos assumed his committee chairmanship when Democrats retook control of Congress. He said at the time that, in a sense, his life had been a preparation for the job.
Rep. Lantos, who called himself "an American by choice," was born to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary, and was 16 when Adolf Hitler occupied Hungary in 1944. He survived by escaping twice from a forced-labor camp and coming under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his official status to save thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Rep. Lantos' mother and much of his family died in the Holocaust.
That background gave him a unique moral authority that he used to speak out on foreign-policy issues, sometimes courting controversy. He advocated for human rights in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere, and in 2006 was one of five members of Congress arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy protesting what the Bush administration describes as genocide in Darfur.
Rep. Lantos was elected to the House in 1980. He founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1983. In early 2004 he led the first congressional delegation to Libya in more than 30 years.
In October, as Foreign Affairs chairman, Rep. Lantos defied administration opposition by moving through his committee a measure that would have recognized the World War I-era killings of Armenians as a genocide, something strongly opposed by Turkey. The bill remains on hold in the House.
Flags at the White House and Capitol were lowered to half-staff.
See more at Lantos' House Web site via