Tom Lantos, RIP; US Representative and Holocaust survivor

Rep Lantos, wife Annette, children and grandchildren, from his official web site

U.S. Representative Lantos (D)-California, who served in the House of Representatives for 27 years and was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, passed away yesterday at the age of 80. He was a rare bird: Born Lantos Tamás Péter in 1928 to a Jewish family in Hungary, he escaped from a Nazi labor camp when he was 16. He eventually won a scholarship to the United States, where he earned his PhD in economics and taught the subject for 30 years before running for congress in 1980.

I didn't agree with him on everything, particularly his rather extreme support for abortion on demand. But he knew terror when he saw it, and spoke out against atrocities all over the world (not just the ones committed by the United States). In 2006, he was arrested in front of the Sudanese embassy in a protest over the genocide in Darfur. Debbie Schlussel sums him up very well.

He was a true American, who said this upon announcing his retirement:

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...I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

Note on the photo above, from the AP:

According to Lantos, his daughters were following through on a promise to produce a very large family because his and his wife's families had perished in the Holocaust.