Lantos, who served as Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in his last term, announced in early January 2008 that he would not run for re-election because of cancer of the esophagus.

[2][3] A Hungarian Jew, Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the United States Congress; he survived the genocide with help from Raoul Wallenberg.

[4] In speaking before the House of Representatives after his death, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that Lantos "devoted his public life to shining a bright light on the dark corners of oppression.

Even at a young age, he understood the significance of this invasion, recalling in a 1999 interview with University of Washington Magazine, "I sensed that this historic moment would have a tremendous impact on the lives of Hungarian Jews, my family, and myself".

[9] Lantos joined Wallenberg's network; his fair hair and blue eyes, which to the Nazis were physical signs of "Aryanism", enabled him to serve as a courier and deliver food and medicine to Jews living in other safe houses.

However, Lantos, then 17, returned home only to discover that his mother and other family members had all been murdered by the Germans, along with 440,000 other Hungarian Jews, during the preceding 10 months of their occupation.

As a result of his fluent English,[citation needed] he wrote an essay about Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was awarded a scholarship by the Hillel Foundation to study in the United States.

Recalling his early life, he announced his retirement by stating to Congress, "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.

[22] Lantos made his first run for office in 1980, challenging Republican Congressman Bill Royer, who had won a 1979 special election after Democrat Leo Ryan was killed in the Jonestown massacre.

[25] Lantos was an advocate on behalf of the environment, receiving consistently high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters and other environmental organizations for his legislative record.

They included speaking for Christians in Saudi Arabia and Sudan to practice their faith, helping Tibetans to retain their culture and religion in Tibet, and advocating for other minorities worldwide.

[32] On other aspects of American foreign policy, Lantos spoke out against waste, fraud and abuse in the multi-billion dollar U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq, and warned that the U.S. could lose Afghanistan to the Taliban if the Bush administration failed to take decisive action to halt the current decline in political stability there.

Asked about having allowed the girl to give testimony without identifying herself, and without her story having been corroborated, Lantos replied, "The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind...

After the war, The New York Times wrote, "It's plainly wrong for a member of congress to collaborate with a public relations firm to produce knowingly deceptive testimony on an important issue.

"[36] On October 4, 2002, Lantos led a narrow majority of Democrats on the House International Relations Committee to a successful vote in support of the Resolution for the Use of Force, seeking the approval of the United Nations and under the condition that President George W. Bush would allow UN weapons inspectors to finish their work and that Bush would need to return to Congress for an actual declaration of war before invading Iraq.

Starting in early 2006, Lantos distanced himself from the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, making critical statements at hearings, on the House floor and in published media interviews about the conduct of the war.

"[38] During a joint House hearing on September 10, 2007, featuring General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Lantos said: The Administration's myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco.

Did the Administration learn nothing from our country's actions in Afghanistan two decades ago, when by supporting Islamist militants against the Soviet Union, we helped pave the way for the rise of the Taliban?

[33]As co-founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1983 and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lantos would "stir the consciousness of world leaders and the public alike", according to Representative Nancy Pelosi.

In a 2007 letter he asked Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia to distance themselves from the Beneš decrees, a reasonable process in the Hedvig Malina case, and to treat members of the Hungarian minority as equal.

[45] On August 27, 2006, at the Israeli Foreign Ministry building in Israel, Lantos said he would block a foreign aid package promised by President George W. Bush to Lebanon unless and until Beirut agreed to the deployment of international troops on the border with Syria and Lebanon takes control of its borders with Syria to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah guerrillas.

In 2007, he backed Morocco's proposal to make the region autonomous under Moroccan rule, saying: "I urge the leadership of the Polisario to realize that they will never again get such a good deal for the population they purport to represent.

In his statement, 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.

"[31]Lantos died from complications of esophageal cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on February 11, 2008, ten days after his 80th birthday, and eleven months before the end of his term.

[31] Numerous politicians memorialized him; House Minority Whip Roy Blunt called him "a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction — and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world", and President George W. Bush called Lantos "a man of character and a champion of human rights" and "a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men".

[49] He was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. A special election was held to fill his seat on April 8, 2008, and was won by former State Senator Jackie Speier, whom Lantos had endorsed.

On September 10, 2011, the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA officially opened the Tom and Annette Lantos Center for Compassion, located at 1450 Rollins Road in Burlingame, California.

"[60] He later denied saying this, but Avital confirmed it, according to Ben Terrall, an adviser to Maad H. Abu-Ghazalah, a Libertarian Party candidate who ran against Lantos that year.

"[62] On January 6, 2008, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds included Lantos's photograph among others featured in the "State Secrets Privilege Gallery" posted on her website, composing images of figures considered to be relevant to her case.

[63] On August 8, 2009, she gave sworn testimony about Lantos and others during a witness deposition before the Ohio Elections Commission in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case, in which she alleged that he had engaged in "[N]ot only ... bribe[ry], but also ... disclosing highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey.