I donÂ’t have to agree with you to respect you.

We donÂ’t have to come from the same political party.

You just have to be a decent person.

The US House of Representatives lost one of those today.

Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, has died. He was 80.

Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded by his wife, Annette, two daughters, and many of his 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Annette Lantos said in a statement that her husband's life was "defined by courage, optimism, and unwavering dedication to his principles and to his family."
Lantos, a Democrat who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He said at the time that he would serve out his 14th term but would not seek re-election in his Northern California district, which takes in the southwest portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south including Lantos' home of San Mateo.
White House press secretary Dana Perino announced the news of Lantos' death to reporters at a morning briefing.

And I never doubted that this amazing man truly loved this country – or that he was an example of just how great this country is.

Lantos, who referred to himself as "an American by choice," was born to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary, and was 16 when Adolf Hitler occupied Hungary in 1944. He survived by escaping twice from a forced labor camp and coming under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his official status and visa-issuing powers to save thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Lantos' mother and much of his family perished in the Holocaust.
* * *

"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," Lantos said upon announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

“An American by choice.” What a marvelous phrase. Indeed, what a tribute to the country he loved. And what a beautiful tribute to this country, where he truly lived out the American dream.

But that was not the only turn of phrase that will stick in my mind. When confronting internet executives who had turned over information about dissidents to the Red Chinese dictators, Lantos was forthright.

"Morally, you are pygmies," he berated top executives of Yahoo Inc. at a hearing he called in November 2007 as they defended their company's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist.

I wish I had said that, for it expresses my sentiments better than I did at the time.

And then there is this profoundly moving happening in his life, something I had not known but which is in many ways proof of the old saying that love overcomes time and place and events.

In 1950 he married Annette, his childhood sweetheart, with whom he'd managed to reunite after the war.

How do you manage to find the ones you love after a profoundly evil happening like the Holocaust? That they managed to do so is a tribute to the love they had for each other – a love that endured for some six decades. My deepest condolences to Annette Lantos and her family.

Posted by: Greg at 10:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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