Only Holocaust survivor in Congress dies

WASHINGTON (AP)–Rep. Tom Lantos, who as a teenager twice escaped from a Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust survivor to win a seat in the U.S. Congress, has died. He was 80.

Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos, who headed the House Foreign Affairs Committee, died early Monday, surrounded by his wife, Annette; two daughters; and many of his 17 grandchildren and two 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, a Democrat, disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He said at the time that he would serve out his 14th term but wouldn’t seek re-election in his northern California district, which takes in part of San Francisco.

President George W. Bush praised Lantos in a statement as “a man of character and a champion of human rights.”

“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,” Bush said. “As the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, 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.”

Flags were lowered to half-staff at the White House and U.S. Capitol building.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “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.”

Speaking to reporters at the State Department, she said, “He was also a dear, dear friend and I am personally quite devastated by his loss.”

The leader of the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Lantos “used his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee to empower the powerless and give voice to the voiceless throughout the world.”

The timing of Lantos’ diagnosis was a particular blow because he had assumed his committee chairmanship just a year earlier, when Democrats retook control of Congress. He said then that in a sense his whole life had been a preparation for the job - and it was.

Lantos, who referred to himself as “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 from the labor camp and coming under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his official status and visa-issuing powers to save thousands of Hungarian Jews.

Lantos’ mother and much of his family perished in the Holocaust.

That background gave Lantos a moral authority unique in Congress and he used it repeatedly to speak out on foreign policy issues, sometimes courting controversy. Lantos was outspoken on human rights in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere, and in 2006 was one of five members of Congress arrested in a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy over the genocide in Darfur.

He joined the Bush administration in strong support of Israel and was a lead advocate for the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion, though he would become a strong critic of Bush’s handling of the war.