Rep Tom Lantos D-CA, Holocaust survivor Congressman, dies
Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:51 am
Veteran Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the US Congress, has died.
Mr Lantos, 80, a member of the House of Representatives for California, passed away on Monday morning. He had been suffering cancer of the oesophagus.
He chaired the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee and called for greater US action on human rights in China, Darfur, Burma and Russia.
Mr Lantos was 16 when the Nazis invaded his native Hungary in 1944.
His mother and many of his relatives perished in the Holocaust.
Mr Lantos announced last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he would not be seeking re-election in his northern California district.
At the time he said: "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."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7239334.stm