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by Elizbeth Fine and Virgil Scudder
Today we offer a tribute to Tom Lantos, a resilient and inspiring man who championed human rights throughout his career. We are honored to have his wife, Annette, with us and his children.
Representative Lantos co-founded the Congressional Human Rights caucus in 1983 and became Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2007, after serving on that committee for 27 years. Under his chairmanship, the Foreign Affairs Commission took strong stands on human rights issues including the Armenian genocide in Turkey and wartime sex slavery in Japan.
The only holocaust survivor to become a member of congress, Mr. Lantos chose America and often reminded Americans of the best qualities that this country offers.
“It is only in the United States” he said when announcing his retirement, “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”.
At WIRED, we believe that he did, through his actions and lifetime of service, fully express that gratitude. Mr. Lantos was also a staunch supporter of our work in Iraq and advocated for WIRED’s programs with the State Department.
We first approached his office by sending a description of WIRED’s work in the Balkans. Among other projects, WIRED had brought computers and internet access to several orphanages, in Sarajevo. The computers connected the orphaned children to the rest of the world and helped further their education. Many, if not all of the children had been orphaned by the war.
Later, Gary Selnow met with the D.C. staff and with Mr. Lantos several times to describe our work. At that point, in 2003, we were in Iraq. Mr. Lantos became keenly interested in exploring ways to assist and support the Iraqis.
As you saw in the CNN segments, he recognized the value of WIRED’s work in Iraq connecting doctors to essential medical information for minimal cost. WIRED’s ability to connect Iraqi doctors to physicians and medical information around the world offered a kind of medical diplomacy invaluable in aiding a country that had been out of touch with medical advances over the past twenty years.
Tom Lantos not only championed WIRED’s work by writing letters to the State Department and talking to the State Department about the importance of WIRED’s work, he also supported us with donations of his own money. Mr. Lantos, an inspiring individual, will be sorely missed by many Americans and others around the world who believe in human rights for all.
Today we honor his memory by presenting a small token of our appreciation to his wife Annette, in the form of artwork done by one of the children in the orphanages of Sarajevo.
The Serbian army blew the hell out of Sarajevo and targeted the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniacs). Many people were killed, and many children were orphaned. When the shelling stopped, people remained isolated.
In 1998, WIRED supplied computers to institutions in Sarajevo, and among them was an orphanage. The computers allowed the kids to access to the internet and connect with the outside world.
This was similar to our earlier work in Vukovar, Croatia. (This was before our medical focus). At the time, supplying computers and the internet (via 56K modems) was a very big deal in Sarajevo.
To thank us and help raise funds for other kids in other cities, the orphans created more than 100 art pieces. We sold many of them and actually made enough money to buy additional computers. The art pieces we’re framing for Tom Lantos and Michael Constantine are among the last of the collection. The drawing is certainly one-of-a-kind, and given its origins, fitting for a champion of human rights and once Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
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