Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Budapest Statue Honors Holocaust Survivor Congressman Lantos

A statue unveiled in Budapest this week honors Rep. Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-born Jew who was imprisoned in a forced labor camp during the Second World War.

“Tom Lantos called on all of us — not just those in government service, but all citizens, all human beings — to show courage in the face of fear, to smooth difficulties and correct mistakes,” said David Kostelancik, a U.S. Embassy representative in Budapest, according to an Associated Press report.

Lantos is the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress. The statue’s unveiling comes amid fears of rising anti-Semitism in Hungary. Last summer, Prime Minister Viktor Orban ran an advertising campaign targeting another Hungarian-American Jewish Holocaust survivor, George Soros, that many decried as anti-Semitic.

The campaign, which was meant to oppose migration and foreign influence in Hungarian affairs, included Soros’s face and the text: “Don’t let George Soros have the last laugh.”

“I am distressed by the current Hungarian regime’s use of antisemitic imagery as part of its deliberate disinformation campaign,” Soros said at the time.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.