For Immediate Release February 12, 2008
Contact: Micah Naftalin (202) 237-8262 x101

Washington, D.C. “UCSJ joins his family, Bay Area constituents and all Americans in mourning the passing of Tom Lantos - California's 12th District Congressman and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee - the only Holocaust Survivor ever elected to the U.S. Congress,” declared Micah H. Naftalin, UCSJ's national director in a statement issued today.

“Soviet Jewry activists owed Tom a special debt of gratitude. In the 1970s and 1980s, he championed our cause in so many ways: a partner in grassroots activism through his support of UCSJ's Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, a pioneering leader of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and a committed leader of the House’s Committee of Conscience Vigil, where members inserted biographies and messages of support for Refuseniks and Prisoners of Conscience into the Congressional Record. His wife Annette Lantos co-chaired UCSJ's Soviet Jewry Congressional Wives committee for more than a decade.

“Our paths crossed many times over the decades, in connection with promoting Holocaust remembrance as well as Soviet Jewry and human rights/religious freedom in the Soviet Union and in the post-Soviet era,” Naftalin notes. In the early 1980s, Naftalin served as acting director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, when planning and fundraising began for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the nation's capital during the chairmanship of Elie Wiesel. “One of my fondest recollections of that period was working with Tom and Annette Lantos to get the street name in front of the Museum changed to Raul Wallenberg Place in honor of the ‘Righteous’ heroism of the diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, including Lantos.

“In his final days, Lantos maintained his priorities, encouraging colleagues in the House and Senate to offer support to the work of the ‘Coalition Against Hate,’ a consortium of 30 human rights and religious freedom NGOs in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, organized by UCSJ and the Moscow Helsinki Group,” Naftalin observed.

“The Holocaust, the plight of Soviet Jews, the courage of the Soviet dissidents and the continuing concern for human rights and religious freedom in that region are but examples of Tom Lantos’ leadership and advocacy in the realm of America’s foreign policy. His death is America's great loss. UCSJ mourns his passing,” Naftalin concluded.

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