WASHINGTON — 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.
“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.”
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.
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 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. 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.
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., 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.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called Lantos a friend and longtime supporter of the United Nations.
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.
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 Khadafy 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.
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel was a close friend.
