Bob_Tarlau's Blog

It’s time to take a pause from partisan politics to remember a party-line Democrat – who today was saluted by the Republican White House.   I mourn – with so many others – the passing of an original… Congressman Tom Lantos of California.   He’s left us at age 80 after a battle with esophageal cancer.

To me, he embodied the definition of a hero.  Not just because he was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.  He spent 27 years on the Hill and was forever a champion of human rights.

He never lost his Hungarian accent, or his love for animals, or his stubborn belief that political leaders have a duty to speak out against tyranny and oppression, no matter where it happens.  The prime minister of Hungary had wanted to honor Rep. Lantos last week with the highest honor that country can bestow.  But that didn’t happen.  The congressman was too sick.

If you didn’t know the Lantos story until now, you’ve certainly been reading and hearing about it in the many long obits.   So just a quick summary here:  He survived the Holocaust by twice escaping from a Nazi labor camp in his teens.   Lantos survived the final years of World War II living in a complex protected by storied Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. He came to the U.S. with nothing but a salami that was confiscated by border agents.

He achieved his goal of chairing the Foreign Affairs panel.  Sadly he only held the gavel for a year. 

Lantos co-founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus 24 years ago, was a tireless supporter of AIDS relief for Africa and raked a number of high-profile corporations over the coals for doing business in countries with questionable civil rights records.   He was almost strong and articulate in his beliefs.  Wow, could he ever speak out.   That got him in trouble in 2006 when he was one of five lawmakers arrested during a demonstration at the Sudanese Embassy to protest ethnic killings in Darfur. 

And – in a scene I will always remember -- he berated and belittled executives from Yahoo last year for providing information to Chinese authorities that eventually led to the imprisonment of a journalist.  At the end of a three-hour hearing, he told them:  "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies."

Lantos' final years in office were marked by a running battle with Bay Area liberals, including many in his own district. They were angered by Lantos' early support for the war in Iraq and his refusal to say that the U.S. was wrong to overturn Saddam Hussein.

It was only last month that Tom Lantos revealed that he had been diagnosed with cancer during a series of routine tests in December.  He said then that he wouldn’t be running for re-election this fall.  That was a hard decision for the congressman, who had said that he would never retire. But with the cancer already wearing him down, he was left with no choice but to concentrate on finishing his final term.  He left public life with no regrets.

The San Francisco Chronicle quotes him as saying:  "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust ... 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 as he announced his retirement. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

The White House issued a statement from President Bush who said: “Tom was a man of character and a champion of human rights.  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.”

Well said Mr. President.