From Sisyphus Shrugged:
Rush Limbaugh on Tom Lantos I look at Lantos telling him that his strategy of withdrawing a brigade is nothing, and I want to ask myself, where is the military expertise of Tom Lantos? Who is advising him? Has he been there? How long ago?
Steve has some of those answers for himWho the HELL is Tom Lantos? Oh, he's led a fairly ordinary life:
Born the only child of upper-middle class Jewish parents in Budapest in 1928, Lantos grew up during a time when Hungary was slowly being taken over by the Nazis.
...When he was 16, German troops invaded his homeland--and along with them came Adolf Eichmann, with orders to exterminate the Jewish population of Hungary.
... Lantos and other young Jewish men were sent to work camps.
... Once, Lantos escaped from the camp but he was caught and "beaten to a pulp."
Desperate with what his life had become, and feeling he had nothing to lose, he tried another escape. When a guard wasn't paying much attention, he disappeared.
...He eventually found refuge in a Budapest apartment building rented by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and under Swedish diplomatic protection.
... Wallenberg put Lantos to work helping out in an elaborate anti-Nazi underground, delivering a bottle of medicine or loaf of bread to Jews Wallenberg had in hiding throughout Budapest.
...As the war entered 1945, life in Budapest deteriorated. It was under constant shelling and the Germans and Russians engaged in house-to-house fighting. Then, at 3 a.m. on a cold January day, a Russian soldier burst into the safe house where Lantos was staying, liberating the teen-ager and his many housemates. By mid-January, the German army pulled out, leaving the Russians in control of the city. But Lantos' relief was short-lived--a search for his mother and the rest of his family ended in vain. They had all been killed....Which, if you think that only personal experience qualifies you for an opinion on war,* makes Lantos rather better qualified than Mr. Limbaugh.
Comments