Former Congressman Tom Lantos, who died in February, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Thursday, June 19th. The former Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the United States Congress.

Thomas Peter Lantos was born in Hungary, on February 1, 1928. When he was 16, Nazi Germany occupied his native country. Lantos was taken to a forced labor camp at at Szob, where he escaped twice. The second time Lantos searched in vain for members of his family - many of whom were killed by the Nazi's - and managed, with the help of Raoul Wallenberg's Swedish-protected passports, to escape to Switzerland with his childhood friend, Annette Tillemann. Lantos moved to the United States where he studied Economics at University of Washington. He married Annette Tillemann in 1950, and she survives him along with their two children.

Tom Lantos' career was devoted to standing up to tyrannical regimes that dismissed human rights with impunity. In one of his last acts of public defiance, Congressman Lantos was arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington in 2006 during a protest against the genocide in Darfur. President Bush said of Lantos at a White House ceremony on Thursday:

"For a lifetime of leadership, for his commitment to liberty, and for his devoted service to his adopted nation, I am proud to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, to Tom Lantos, and proud that his loving wife Annette will receive the award on behalf of his family."

[image:SFGate]