http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../MNDGV0EFH.DTL
Lantos dies, House's sole Holocaust survivor
Marisa Lagos,John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writers
(02-11) 18:14 PST WASHINGTON -- In the nearly 60 years Tom Lantos spent in the United States, he never lost his Hungarian accent, his love for animals or his stubborn belief that political leaders have a duty to speak out against tyranny or oppression, wherever it occurs.
Lantos, the Democratic congressman from San Mateo for 27 years, died Monday morning at Maryland's Bethesda Naval Hospital from cancer of the esophagus. He was 80. He championed the causes of those who often had no other voice, whether they were in Tibet, Darfur, China or anywhere else in the world.
As a teenage boy in Hungary, Lantos escaped from Nazi labor camps and the genocide of the Holocaust, which took the lives of most of his family. It was a time he never forgot and that shaped the rest of his life.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district split San Francisco's voters with Lantos', said the Peninsula politician made it his life's work to shine "a bright light on the dark corners of oppression" and used his position in Congress to "empower the powerless and give a voice to the voiceless throughout the world."
President Bush, who felt the edge of the congressman's sharp tongue more than once, called Lantos a man of character who was "a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men."
With his shock of white hair and unmistakable European accent, Lantos was often described as courtly or as a gentleman of the old school. But he also was a tough political infighter who didn't much care whom he offended when it came to making a point.
He founded the bipartisan Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1983 and served unabashedly as Congress' conscience when it came to those issues.
His "tireless and passionate work for human rights around the globe is legendary," said Jackie Speier, a former Democratic state senator whom Lantos endorsed Jan. 16 to succeed him in Congress. "No one was more articulate, persuasive or tenacious in fighting for the common people, and no adversary was too large for Tom."
In 1987, then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping attacked Lantos by name for "slandering and vilifying China" over complaints about human rights abuses in Tibet.
Two years ago, Lantos was arrested in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington as he protested the continuing strife in the country's Darfur region.
"If you're looking for a lack of international morality, Darfur encompasses all aspects," he said.
When Yahoo, the Sunnyvale tech giant, was accused of providing the Chinese government with information that enabled it to track down and imprison dissidents who used the service, Lantos summoned Jerry Yang, the company's founder, and the company's top lawyer to Washington in November and took them to task.
"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he told them at the end of a three-hour hearing before his House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Lantos' life was "defined by courage, optimism and unwavering dedication to his principles and to his family," Annette, his wife of 57 years, said in a statement. Lantos was surrounded by his wife, two daughters and many of his 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren when he died, a spokeswoman said.
Lantos was born in Budapest in 1928 and was 16 when the Nazis took the city in March 1944. Most Jews outside the Hungarian capital were sent to Auschwitz, while young Jewish men from Budapest were taken to forced labor camps.
Lantos was taken to a camp at Szob, a village about 40 miles from the capital, from which he escaped twice. The second time he made it to a safe house in Budapest.
The house was one of those under the protection of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death camps. In 1981, Lantos wrote the bill that made Wallenberg only the second honorary U.S. citizen, after former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The Red Army liberated Budapest in January 1945, and Lantos began to search for his family. Most had died, but he managed to contact Annette Tillemann, a childhood friend who had escaped to Switzerland with her mother. Like Lantos, most of her relatives perished in the death camps.
The two were reunited in Hungary later that winter and married in 1950. She was a lifetime partner, volunteering in his office during his years in Congress.
Lantos began studying at the University of Budapest in 1946 and received a scholarship in 1947 to study in the United States. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Washington and a doctorate from UC Berkeley.
Lantos and his wife settled in San Mateo County in 1950, and Lantos became an economics professor at San Francisco State, where one student remembered him as one of the few teachers in the 1970s to wear a coat and tie to class every day.
He made his first foray into politics when he won a seat on the Millbrae school board and was a regular foreign policy analyst on public television. In 1978, he moved to Washington as an adviser to Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, who was planning a run for president.
"Tom Lantos was one of my closest friends in life," Biden said Monday. "His steadfast commitment to human rights and freedom across the world will live long after today."
When Peninsula Rep. Leo Ryan was killed in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, Lantos wanted to run in the crowded special election to replace him, but he kept his commitment to Biden and stayed in Washington. In a 2000 Chronicle interview, Lantos conceded that if he had run in that special election, he would have finished "somewhere between fifth and eighth, and that would have been the end of my political career."
Instead, Lantos jumped into the 1980 race and shocked incumbent Republican Bill Royer despite the Reagan landslide that devastated most Democratic candidates.
Despite his concern about foreign affairs, Lantos didn't neglect his district. While he lived nearly full time in Washington, he worked to add Sweeney Ridge near Pacifica and the Phleger Estate in Woodside to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, supported improvements at San Francisco International Airport and brought federal support for the Devil's Slide Bypass tunnel, which state Sen. Leland Yee wants named for Lantos.
"If you don't take care of the people in the district, you can't take care of people on the other side of the world," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, whose Peninsula district adjoins that of Lantos. "He dominated the political scene for three decades, and we worked together on many issues for San Mateo County."
Throughout his time in the House, Lantos, the lone Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, was a strong supporter of Israel and Jewish issues.
Lantos "transformed his own painful experience during the Holocaust into a lifelong commitment to preserving the dignity and security of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and to fighting for the human rights of all," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Lantos also was one of the congressional leaders on animal welfare issues and was seldom spotted without his dog, Maxco. The national Humane Society plans to honor him with its highest award, previously given to people like Joy Adamson, Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, James Herriot and Richard Leakey.
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 the United States was wrong to overturn Saddam Hussein.
"I abhor war in the way only a survivor and a grandfather of 17 can," Lantos said in a 2002 Chronicle interview. "But ... if the costs of war are great, the costs of inaction and appeasement are greater still."
That unpopular stand on the war, combined with a feeling that Lantos had lost touch with his district, persuaded Speier to challenge him in the June 2008 Democratic primary. But on Jan 2, before she could officially open her campaign, Lantos announced that he had cancer and would not run for re-election.
It was a hard decision for Lantos, 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.
"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."
Services are pending.
Proof that not all politicians are just political machines. R.I.P.
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