U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos died of esophageal cancer at the age of 80. Lantos survived the Holocaust by escaping twice from a forced labor camp and was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. He was a strong supporter of Israel.
Tom Lantos was born in Budapest, Hungary, on February 1, 1928. He was 16 years of age when Nazi Germany occupied his native country. As a teenager, he was placed in a Hungarian fascist forced labor camp. He succeeded in escaping and was able to survive in a safe house in Budapest set up by Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg. His story is one of the individual accounts which forms the basis of Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award winning documentary about the Holocaust in Hungary, The Last Days.
He was a strong supporter of Israel and a lead advocate for the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq war. Lantos contributed to the building of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and was one of five members of Congress arrested in a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy over the genocide in Darfur In 2006.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: ‘From Jerusalem, the State of Israel sends its sincerest condolences to the family of Tom Lantos, may his memory be blessed. The State of Israel owes a great debt to Lantos, who made the advancement of Israel-US relations and activity on behalf of the Jewish People his life’s work.’
US President Bush: ‘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.’
Lantos died at the Naval Medical Center in suburban Bethesda, Md., surrounded by his wife, Annette, two daughters and many of his 18 grandchildren.
