Oregon Public Broadcasting

California Congressman Tom Lantos, the only holocaust survivor to be elected to Congress, died Monday at the age of 80.

Lantos' life story gave him a unique moral authority on Capitol Hill to speak out about human rights. Now, the person to step in and fill that void, could be Oregon Congressman David Wu. Ethan Lindsey reports.

Lantos was born in Hungary, and twice escaped from Nazi concentration camps. He and other Hungarian Jews got out of Europe when a Swedish diplomat issued them passports.

Oregon's David Wu was born in China in 1961. During the cultural revolution of the 1960s, millions of Chinese were killed by the communist government. His family escaped to the U.S. when he was six, after John Kennedy reformed American immigration quotas.

David Wu: “Tom Lantos was persecuted, he was put in a concentration camp. I draw strength from my experiences. Being scared by a column of tanks rolling down the street when I was a little kid. .”

Wu hastens to say, nobody can replace Lantos, who served in Congress since 1980. Lantos had chaired the Foreign Affairs committee since last year. That's a high-profile group -- and as such has several members who may try to step up.

Wu has been on the committee since last year, and says he will certainly try to follow Lantos' leadership.

David Wu: “Clearly Chairman Lantos was a giant in the field. I don't know if I will ever have his style or his voice. But I intend to be every bit as dedicated, and it will take a chorus of voices to come even close to replacing him.”

And even then, the voices probably won't match the wit and sometimes wrath of Lantos.

He was particularly known for his outspoken criticism of China's human rights record.

At a Congressional hearing last year, Lantos blasted Yahoo executives for helping the Chinese government arrest a political dissident.

Tom Lantos: “My message to these companies today is simple: Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.”

David Wu says Lantos' understanding of China was deep and real. After the Yahoo hearing, Lantos famously called Yahoo's executives “moral pygmies.”

David Wu:  “I didn't have the stature -- or perhaps the inclination -- to call some of the folks moral pygmies. I was working on bricks-and-mortar, where he had an overall sense of the whole pyramid.”

Wu says he may try to redirect public attention and policy work from abroad to back home.

For one thing, Oregonians are concerned about the domestic front.  And for another, Wu says,  issues like wiretapping and civil liberties are more at risk than ever before.