U.S. Congressman, Tom Lantos (D-CA, 12th district), dies

[DevotedToAMC]

*courtesy of The New York Times*

Tom Lantos, 80, Is Dead; Longtime Congressman

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: February 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — Representative Tom Lantos of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, died on Monday. He was 80.

His death, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., was announced by Lynne A. Weil, a spokeswoman for his office. Mr. Lantos said last month that he had cancer of the esophagus and would retire early next year, at the end of his 14th term.

Mr. Lantos, a Democrat, represented a district that includes southwest San Francisco as well as his hometown, San Mateo. He became chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee early last year after the Democrats had regained control of the House.

The congressman was known as a strong defender of human rights, an ardent supporter of Israel and an outspoken critic of Communism. He also worked for stronger protections for animals and the environment.

“Tom was a living reminder,” President Bush said in a statement Monday, “that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men.”

Mr. Bush called Mr. Lantos “a man of character and a champion of human rights,” and cited his role as a founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, created in 1983.

Mr. Lantos voted in 2002 to authorize the Bush administration to use force against Iraq. But as Foreign Affairs chairman he criticized the administration’s handling of the war and was a co-sponsor of a resolution last year opposing Mr. Bush’s buildup of troops.

It was his defense of human rights, though, that most clearly defined a Congressional career that lasted nearly three decades. That focus was an outgrowth of his experience during the Holocaust, in which much of his family, including his mother, perished.

Mr. Lantos, a Hungarian-born Jew who was 16 when the Nazis occupied his native country, once said his entire life had served as preparation for the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Though he held the post for little more than a year, the committee took a number of bold steps in that time, demanding, for instance, that the government of Japan apologize for wartime sex slavery by its military and declaring Turkey’s mass killing of Armenians in World War I an act of genocide, a move that angered the Bush administration and nearly provoked a confrontation with the Turkish government.

He was frequently critical of China, citing its record on human rights, and was arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington in 2006 during a protest against the mass killings in Darfur.

Mr. Lantos had a tart tongue that could offend foreign leaders. In October, members of the Dutch Parliament said he had insulted them by pointedly telling them at a meeting that some Europeans were more outraged by the Guantánamo detention center than by Auschwitz. And he once called former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany a “political prostitute” because of his ties to the Russian gas industry.

In a speech on the Senate floor on Monday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, recalled working with Mr. Lantos to support democracy in Burma and to impose additional sanctions against Iran on the ground that it supported terrorism.

Thomas Peter Lantos, born into a family of educators in Budapest, twice escaped from forced-labor camps after the Nazis occupied Hungary. His survival was due in part to the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews by issuing them Swedish-protected passports and declaring them Swedish subjects. “This was like me declaring you to be prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Ballet; it had no validity,” Mr. Lantos was to say. And yet, he said, “these miraculous, worthless pieces of paper worked.”

One of Mr. Lantos’s first acts after being elected to Congress in 1980 was to introduce legislation naming Wallenberg an honorary United States citizen.

Mr. Lantos was one of five Hungarian Holocaust survivors featured in the film “The Last Days,” which won the 1998 Academy Award for best documentary feature.

After the war, Mr. Lantos managed to reunite with his childhood friend Annette Tillemann, who had escaped to Switzerland. They moved to the United States after he won a scholarship, and married in 1950. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics at the University of Washington and then a doctorate in economics from the University of California.

He taught economics at San Francisco State University from 1950 to 1980 and also served as a television commentator on international affairs. He was a member of the Presidential Task Force on Defense and Foreign Policy in 1976 and was an aide to Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, in 1978-79.

Besides his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Annette Dick of Denver and Katrina Swett of Bow, N.H.; 17 grandchildren; and 2 great-grandchildren. Ms. Swett’s husband, Richard Swett, is a former congressman from New Hampshire and onetime ambassador to Denmark.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents a district in San Francisco adjacent to Mr. Lantos’s, called his death “a profound loss for the Congress and for the nation and a terrible loss for me personally.”

Looking back on his immigrant past, Mr. Lantos often declared himself an “American by choice.”

“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,” he said in a statement last month on announcing he would retire. “I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.”

***Wow what a loss for Congress! I am in the 7th district of CA but the one he represents is not too far from me (about 1 hour and possibly 15 minutes extra). My brother's girlfriend lives in his district. RIP Tom!***