AP/SacBee has the unfortunate news:
Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, has died, his spokeswoman said Monday.
Lynne Weil said that Lantos, 80, passed away at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland.
Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor in Congress and had a long record on human rights issues.
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.
Lantos had already announced his retirement because of the cancer. He becomes the second California member of Congress to succumb to cancer in this session after Juanita Millender-McDonald who passed away in April.
Tom Lantos was a giant and will be missed both as a legislator and a person.
Some may remember Tom Lantos from the Oscar winning documentary “The Last Days.” Others may remember him as one of the strongest white voices (and an early one) against the violence in Darfur. Lantos may not have been always right but he was a voice we needed to hear who could, at times, keep important things in mind.
One of the saddest pieces on Lantos was a somewhat vicious attack at TPM calling the Holocaust survuvor a “phony” a “fraud” and a “fake.” Nonsense. Now that was something that should have been out of bounds.
Lantos’ decision to retire when he still had over $1 million in the bank makes more sense now. He was running from his mortality, in a way, and not from opposition in a primary. Too bad. Perhaps a survivor from Cambodia or Darfur will enter Congress. With those exceptions, let’s hope there will never be another like him (Holocaust survivor elected to congress) again. Because that will mean no more Holocausts.