In Memoriam: Tom Lantos, human rights champion

The world lost a real human-rights defender yesterday when U.S. Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) passed away. While I didn't agree with every vote he cast, I knew that, unlike many lawmakers, he always had a principled position. His ideals were forged in the fires of the Holocaust, when he was a teenager in Hungary, escaping Nazi forced-labor camps and working in the resistance.

In The Last Days, a film by Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, Lantos reflected on the way his world began to change:

"My Christian classmates reacted to Hitler's invasion in different ways. Some remained good friends. Some made me feel that they continued to be my friends, but they didn't want to be seen in public with me, particularly not after we had to wear the yellow Star of David, which was one of the Hungarian government's edicts after Hitler came into the country. Some turned against Jews in general and me in particular....While a handful of Hungarian Christians were helpful, a vast number were bystanders -- some with regret and sorrow, some with very different feelings....Most people did not participate actively, but they allowed it to happen."

Tom Lantos did not stand by when he saw injustice. In 1983, he cofounded the bipartisan Congressional Human Rights Caucus. As the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, he used his moral authority to lift up the plight of the oppressed around the globe. In April 2006, I was there when he and a handful of other members were arrested outside of the Sudanese embassy while protesting the genocide in Darfur.

When UUSC founders Martha and Waitstill Sharp were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Memorial in Israel, Rep. Lantos introduced a resolution with Rep. McGovern (D-MA) to honor them. He told his staff that it was especially important to recognize the Sharps' bravery because their actions were purely motivated by their religious beliefs. He noted that they were not European bureaucrats who happened to be in a position of power to fix passports or provide safe haven. They chose to put themselves in harm's way because they could not in good conscience stand by and let Nazi terror go unchallenged.

I will miss seeing Rep. Lantos walking around Capitol Hill with Annette, his childhood sweetheart and wife of 50-plus years, and their little dog almost always at his side. I hope that others in Congress will be inspired to become human-rights defenders because our work is far from done.