Holocaust Survivor Rep. Tom Lantos Dies
California Democrat Was Only Holocaust Survivor To Serve In Congress
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Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif. questions panel of witnesses during a joint hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in this Feb. 15, 2006 file photo. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
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Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., 80, disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. (AP)
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Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos, a Californian, died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was 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 who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, 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 would not seek re-election in his Northern California district, which takes in the southwest portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south including Lantos' home of San Mateo.
President 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.
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."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Lantos "used his chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs 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 what the Bush administration describes as 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 President Bush's handling of the war.
Lantos was a frequent visitor to Hungary, meeting with political leaders and holding recurrent news conferences which were widely covered in the Hungarian press. He was widely recognized there for his calls for the respect of the human rights of the millions of ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries, especially Romania and Slovakia, whose cultural identity was a common target of those countries' communist regimes.
"Tom Lantos deserves that the millions of people in Central-Eastern Europe think about him for a moment and guard his memory," Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said in parliament.
Lantos, who was elected to the House in 1980, founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1983. In early 2004 he led the first congressional delegation to Libya in more than 30 years, meeting personally with Moammar Gadhafi and urging the Bush administration to show "good faith" to the North African leader in his pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons programs. Later that year, President 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.
Tall and dignified, Lantos never lost the accent of his native Hungary, but his courtly demeanor belied the cutting comments he would make in committee if the testimony he heard was not to his liking.
"Morally, you are pygmies," he berated top executives of Yahoo Inc. at a hearing he called in November 2007 as they defended their company's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist.
"This is about as believable as Elvis being seen in a Kmart," was his retort to a witness testifying before a subcommittee he headed in 1989 that led a congressional investigation of Reagan-era scandals at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Lantos was elected to Congress after spending three decades teaching economics at San Francisco State University, working as a business consultant and serving as a foreign policy commentator on television. He challenged GOP incumbent Rep. Bill Royer in 1980 and won narrowly, subsequently winning re-election by comfortable margins.
"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. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
Lantos came to the United States in 1947 after being awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1950 he married Annette, his childhood sweetheart, with whom he'd managed to reunite after the war. The couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area so Lantos could pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
The first major bill Lantos passed in Congress was to give honorary American citizenship to Wallenberg, whom he called "the central figure in my life." But Lantos sometimes shied away from talking about his experiences in the war. When he joined a lawsuit in 1984 to seek Wallenberg's release from the Soviet Union - Wallenberg was captured and imprisoned by Soviet troops after World War II - Lantos told The Associated Press that he "didn't want to dwell on the details" of the dangers he faced from the Nazis.
Lantos joined the Hungarian Underground after the Nazi occupation but was captured and sent to a forced labor camp 40 miles north of Budapest, according to the biography on his congressional Web site. He was beaten severely when he tried to escape, but feeling he had nothing to lose he made another attempt. This time he made it back to Budapest and to one of the safehouses that Wallenberg had established.
Lantos credited Wallenberg's protection, his own Aryan appearance - blond hair, blue eyes - and a good measure of luck with helping him survive the war. But he said that at the time he didn't think he had much of a chance of staying alive.
"I was sixteen, but I was very old," he said in an interview for "The Last Days," the 1999 book accompanying the Steven Spielberg documentary of the same name that focused on the experience of Hungarian-American survivors.
"The bloodbath, the cruelty, the death that I saw, so many times around me during those few months between March of 1944 and January of 1945 made me a very old young man."
Lantos and his wife had two daughters, Annette and Katrina, who between them produced 18 grandchildren, one of whom died young. According to Lantos, his daughters were following through on a promise to produce a very large family because his and his wife's families had perished in the Holocaust.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



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See all 71 Comments-- Hermann Goering, Hitler''s Reich-Marshall
at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII
One neozioncon less to deal with.
But as a Palestinian I''m very, very happy about the passing away of this Lantos dude. I''ve never seen a more anti-Palestinian b.astard in the US Congress than this freak.
Good ridance to this sorry example of a Holocaust survivor. A hypocrite like no other who''s done absolutely nothing to advance the peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Did Lantos vote for, or against the bush war?
Did he ever do anything to promote a settlement in Palestine?
Lantos was a strong supporter of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the run-up to the war, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Lantos was co-chairman, hosted a young Kuwaiti woman identified only as "Nurse Nayirah", who told of horrific abuses by Iraqi soldiers, including the killing of Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor of the hospital. These alleged atrocities figured prominently in the rhetoric at the time about Iraqi abuses in Kuwait.
The girl''s account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors.[16] "Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.[16] Asked about his having allowed the girl to give testimony without identifying herself, and without her story having been corroborated, Lantos replied, "The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind... I have no basis for assuming that her story is not true, but the point goes beyond that. If one hypothesizes that the woman''s story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations"
RIP
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Posted by demslie
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Posted by singinrick at 11:54 AM : Feb 11, 2008
Talk about the pot callin'' the sky black.
Look for yourselves under "hypocrite"...
Good ridance to this sorry example of a Holocaust survivor. A hypocrite like no other who''''s done absolutely nothing to advance the peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Posted by closethippy1
Only mildly hate-filled--huh??
The Regime is refusing to let the trial of the AIPAC spies go forward...These treasonous dogs, need to be in the ground or in jail with the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. And, what of the Israeli spies captured after filming themselves celebrating with the smoking ruins of the WTC towers in the background?...the ones who said on Israeli TV that they were there "to document" the event.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once told his colleagues ''not to worry, we control America''... with Demopublican dogs like Tom Lantos safe in the ground, there will be one less servant of the Zio-Nazi enemy in the House.
Good ridance to this sorry example of a Holocaust survivor. A hypocrite like no other who''''s done absolutely nothing to advance the peace between Israelis and Palestinians"--Posted by closethippy1
The kind of peace shown by the election of Hamas, sworn to destroy Isreal, in Gaza?
As a native-born U.S. citizen, "I''''m very, very happy about the passing away of" any number of Palistinean terrorists.
No hypocrisy there! They swear to smash Israel and murder Israelis, and they do it! The hypocrisy comes from their mouthpieces who pretend Hamas "wants peace." Crapola!
And when Prickowhales dies: "Good riddance. One more Israel-hater on his way to hell. Have fun dancing with Satan!"
The Regime is refusing to let the trial of the AIPAC spies go forward...These treasonous dogs, need to be in the ground or in jail with the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. And, what of the Israeli spies captured after filming themselves celebrating with the smoking ruins of the WTC towers in the background?...the ones who said on Israeli TV that they were there "to document" the event.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once told his colleagues ''''not to worry, we control America''''... with Demopublican dogs like Tom Lantos safe in the ground, there will be one less servant of the Zio-Nazi enemy in the House.
Posted by Prinzowhales
Mild anger management issues--just up your Haldol--you''ll be fine
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Posted by Prinzowhales
You CANNOT call a Jew a Nazi. Absolutely, no way. I don''t care what your personal feelings are, that is beneath contempt.
I never heard any more about this village of inhumane conditions. Ronald Reagan''s White House staffers was very instrumental in censoring ABC from further broadcasts about the situation. ABC was browbeat senseless and threatened with deprived access to the White House if it continued.
I am not Palestinian, but I clearly see the Pro-Isreal fanaticism is a wave of foriegn policy failure that won''t easily be accepted. If it was not a failure, then why do problems still exist?
I have met and seen fresh Isreali immigrants and witnessed horrifying displayal of racism, male chauvanism and oppressive treatment of non-Isreali people. I deplore them more so than un-adjusted immigrants of other countries.
Zionists like Lantos are working hand-in-hand with the sons and heirs of the Capitalists who financed Hitler and helped build his war machine--George W. Bush''s grandfather was a chief among them.
The current leadership of Israel are of the Jabotinsky faction...a fascist faction of World Zionism like the Betar who were allowed to train and fly the Zionist flag in Germany...Zio-Nazi is a fit word for them...and I''m going to use it!
A most fitting description of those who spew their hate, slander, venom, etc, against a person like Tom Lantos - who fought for people''s rights, freedoms from oppression, and against murder of innocent people the world over - would be;
hateful, fascistic, evil, and probably somehow abused in his/her life.
We ALL must forever be on our guard against such individuals, whose sole purpose seems to be dedicated to committing repeated acts of evil and general trouble-making.
All decent people recognize Tom Lantos as a great man who stood for justice. His passing is a loss to the entire world.
He never placed the interests of Israel above that of his country.
Unlike Joe Lieberman, who would support anyone as long as they support the war in Iraq, Israel''s war.
That''s the only reason behind his support for warmonger #1 John McCain.
Traitor to his party, traitor to his country.
Maybe there is such anger because those that call them selves Palestinians are really arabs without a country since Jordan, Egypt and others didn''''t want you because they know what corrupt killers you are.
Posted by joule3 at 02:36 PM : Feb 11, 2008
Hamas has told Israel on several occasions that they have reached an agreement with the other militant groups to stop all rocekt fire in exchange for a cesafire.
But Israel declined. Even when there were unilateral ceasfires from the Palestinians Israel always continued its attacks on the Palestinians.
So d.amn if you do and d.amn if you don''t.
Palestine was first named so by the Greek historian Herodotus at around 400 BC. It was the first place where human kind practice agriculture and the first city, Jericho, was built.
People there have their own accent, way of dressing up, architecture, and so on in the same way the countries of Latin America do: They all speak the same language and have the same religion
but they differ in other ways.
This thing about Palestinians not being Palestinians is getting very, very old and, frankly, is a mindless thing to say.
then I''d be impressed!
Posted by USAyesterday at 03:55 PM : Feb 11, 2008
I agree.
R.I.P. Tom
If Eichman had been a Zionist even in the twisted sense of a dumping ground for European Jews, he would have sent those millions of victims to the Middle East instead of to the gas chambers.
Shows how ridiculous Prickowhales'' comments are. The guy is an ultrarighty from North Carolina, perhaps a member of Aryan Nations or one of the "British Israel" groups or something of the sort. In other words, a total fruitcake, just spewing hate at every turn.
There''s an answer for Jew-haters and Jew-baiters like Pricko--except it''s not spoken, it''s fired.
http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html
http://tinyurl.com/yr8rfd
http://www.rense.com/general65/compare.htm
And, in particular, this link notes how Eichmann became a fervant Zionist after reading THE JEWISH STATE, by Herzl and how he attended the 35 anniversary of Theodore Herzl''s death.
http://www.rense.com/general40/zionn.htm
Israel''s legal basis lies in the division of Palestine by the UN...and so does that of the unrealized Palestinian state.
We can make peace--but not by following the most radical and racialist elements of Israeli and American society.
The UN made the division...it is up to the world to enforce it and maintain the security of both states.
Israel is the only state in the world that refuses to state its borders. And, thanks to the US and UK, it can flout international law and agreements and be protected in the Security Council by its imperial masters.
Lantos was a very good person, who acquired education and succeeded through his life and rose above his negative experiences. It is sad to see that he finally made it to foreign relations and didn''t get to serve it.
Posted by singinrick at 04:15 PM : Feb 11, 2008
You''re talking about an entire nation of millions of people who have been borned and raised under occupation.
Look at how long it took Iraqis to resist the occupation of their country. Imagine if the US stays there for 40 years, what kind of violence there will be?
By then the Iraqis would be really frustrated and I wouldn''t be surprise if they start killing American civilians besides US soldiers.
It''s the occupation of more than 40 years that has driven everyone crazy over there. There''s no let up and Israel refuses to implement the UN resolutions that they themselves signed onto.
So what do you expect? Love letters from the Palestinians to the Israelis???
So what do you expect? Love letters from the Palestinians to the Israelis???
Posted by closethippy1
An occupation that would not be neccesary if the Palestinians would declare peace, recognize Israel''s right to exist, and stop sending missiles and suicide bombers into Israel. Each year the Palestinians drift further and further into poverty. It is time to start worrying about better futures for their children. That is, if they care about their children''s future.
As you well know, he said that the regime that controlled Quds would disappear from the pages of history...it was a quote from an ayatollah...in the same context he said "regime-e" would dissappear like the Communist regime in Moscow and the Nazi regime.
Instead of favoring one side, and judging the other, we should eliminate the hatred and bigotry that has allowed this to go on.
You''re full of it!
We know your secret agenda.
To create hatred between Christians and Muslims so we''ll fight your proxy wars for your country.
And that country ain''t the US of A.
It''s hate-mongers like you and bin laden that''s bringing America to ruin!
Fighting your landgrab wars.
Begone, ***.
Posted by rhs648 at 06:33 PM : Feb 11, 2008
But Palestinians don''t have to recognize anything. They are the ones under military occupation and according to international law Israel is suppose to look for their well-being while preparations for a withdrawal are being made.
That has not happened. All Israel does is confiscate land and transfer civilians unto them and that way breaking international law.
According to international law it''s Israel''s responsability to implement the UN resolutions that it has signed over 40 years ago.
To better understand what I''m saying look at what happened in Kosovo during the late 90''s: The Serbs decided to ethnically cleanse the area and no one in the world demanded the Kosovo Albanians to recognize anything about Serbia. The Kosovo Albanians even had their own terror groups.
But what the Kosovo Albanians said or did was never issue here. The issue was Serbia breaking international law by taking over someone else''s land by force and ethnic cleansing.
Prickowhales, Aryan Nations far righty fascist, thinks it''s just fine that "Muslim lands", dictatorships where all freedom of conscience is denied, occupy the entire middle east. Strange how a land can be a "Muslim land" where sharia guarantees oppression for non-Muslims, while the middle east''s only democracy is smeared by this pro-jihadi suckwad.
Pricko''s agenda is the annihiliation of the Jewish People, and Judaism. He cares not whether it''s done by the neonazis or by the muslim jihadis.
And the slimy little nazi must either be an unemployed bum, or alternatively, independently wealthy, to be able to spend all day every day spewing his scum on the internet.
Or maybe he''s a college professor.
Withdrawal? I don''t think so. Perhaps the Egyptians can take in the Gaza folk.
But it turns out that their Muslim brothers in Egypt don''t want these vicious animals on their turf, either. Wonder why?
Time to scrape this piece of old fecal matter off the bottom of the shoe. For a bit of amusement, Google "prinzowhales" and check out his endless rants on scotsman.com and elsewhere.
Must be pretty dull there in Pittsboro, NC, for this nazi vermin to have so much time to spread his filth.
But it turns out that their Muslim brothers in Egypt don''''t want these vicious animals on their turf, either. Wonder why?
Posted by gkc99 at 08:07 PM : Feb 11, 2008
OK, so if Israel doesn''t want to withdraw why did they sing on to the UN resolutions demanding so? And why transfer their civiilian on confiscated land?
The least they can do is to stop confiscating land, give the water resources back to the Palestinians, and stop collective punishment.
It is racist to say that a nation under occupation has to be judge according to how they react to the occupation. You can''t get a fair assessment of the Palestinians'' character while they are under occupation.
As a Palestinian myself with a 1200 acres olive farm in the village of Aboud nearby Ramallah I''m not going to waste my time with a delusional moron like you.
It''s the height of arrogance for someone to tell me who I am, who I''m not, what my history is and what belongs and doesn''t belong to me.
As far as Israeli children not taught hatred... Goodness, go to YouTube and put in a search for "Israeli settlers".
Sit back and enjoy the show.
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