(JTA) — Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and longtime U.S. congressman, was honored outside the Budapest house where he lived during World War II.
The ceremony coincided with the 70th anniversary of a Nazi decree that forced Budapest Jews to live in houses marked with a yellow Star of David until the city’s ghetto was established several months later, the Times of Israel reported.
Lantos was arrested by the Nazis in 1944, at age 16, and taken to a forced labor camp outside the city. After escaping, he lived for six months in a yellow-star house along with another 70 Jews.
Lantos participated in the anti-Nazi resistance until the end of the war in 1945; two years later he moved to the United States. In 1980, he was elected to the House of Representatives.
The northern California Democrat served 14 terms and is the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the Congress. Lantos died in 2008.
The June 21 ceremony was hosted by the Yellow Star Houses Project of the Open Society Archives.