REP. TOM LANTOS DEAD AT 80
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
Feb 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) – Rep. Tom Lantos, who escaped the Nazis and grew
up to become a forceful voice for human rights all over the world,
has died. He was 80.
The California Democrat, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in
Congress, died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in
Maryland, said his spokeswoman, Lynne Weil. He 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.
Annette Lantos said in a statement that her husband’s life was
"defined by courage, optimism, and unwavering dedication to his
principles and to his family."
Lantos, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was serving
his 14th term in Congress. He had said he would not seek re-election
in his Northern California district, which takes in the southwest
portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south.
"Tom was a man of character and a champion of human rights," President
Bush said in a statement. "After immigrating to America more than six
decades ago, he worked to help oppressed people around the world have
the opportunity to live in freedom."
"Tom was a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to
the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men," Bush said.
Lantos assumed his committee chairmanship when Democrats retook
control of Congress. He said at the time that in a sense his whole
life had been a preparation for the job – and it was.
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.
Lantos’ mother and much of his family perished in the Holocaust.
That background gave Lantos 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.
Lantos’ end came faster than his many friends and admirers had
expected.
"Tom Lantos was a true American hero. He was the embodiment of what it
meant to have one’s freedom denied and then to find it and to insist
that America stand for spreading freedom and prosperity to others,"
said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "He was also a dear, dear
friend and I am personally quite devastated by his loss." House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Lantos used his committee chairmanship
"to empower the powerless and give voice to the voiceless throughout
the world."
Flags at the White House and Capitol were lowered to half-staff
in Lantos’ honor. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both delivered remembrances on the
Senate floor.
Tributes poured in from Jewish groups worldwide, as well as from the
Israeli foreign ministry, the prime minister of Hungary, the governor
of California and the mayor of New York City.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Lantos a friend and longtime
supporter of the United Nations, whose "immeasurable efforts in
attuning the consciousness and the conscience of people to the dangers
of intolerance and human rights violations will long be remembered,"
" said U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas.
Lantos was a frequent visitor to Hungary, where he was widely
recognized for advocating for the rights of the millions of ethnic
Hungarians in neighboring countries, especially Romania and Slovakia,
whose cultural identity was a common target of those countries’
communist regimes.
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, met personally
with Moammar Gadhafi and urged the administration to show "good faith"
to the North African leader in his pledge to abandon his nuclear
weapons programs. Later that year, Bush lifted sanctions against Libya.
In October 2007, as Foreign Affairs chairman, 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 has
not passed the House.
"(Lantos) saw his survival from the camps in Europe as a reason to
devote his life to help victims of discrimination, oppression and
persecution everywhere," said Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, a close
friend. "He was outspoken in whatever he did."
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the
Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have
received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of
serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress,"
Lantos said upon announcing his retirement last month.
Lantos and his wife had two daughters, Annette and Katrina, who between
them produced 18 grandchildren. One grandchild died young. According
to Lantos, his daughters fulfilled their promise to produce very
large families because his and his wife’s families had perished in
the Holocaust.