U.S. Congressman Will Visit Estonia

A member of the U.S. House of Representatives Tom Lantos will visit Estonia on January 6-7, 2000. He was first elected to Congress in 1980 and in 1998, Tom Lantos was elected to his tenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the only survivor of the Holocaust ever elected to Congress.

During his visit, Tom Lantos is to meet with President Lennart Meri, Minister of Foreign Affairs Toomas Hendrik Ilves, members of the Estonian-U.S. Parliamentary Group and representatives of non-governmental organisations.

Tom Lantos was born in Budapest in 1928. He received a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Washington in Seattle and later earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Before he was elected to Congress (1950 - 1980), Tom Lantos was a professor of economics, an international affairs analyst for television and a consultant to a number of businesses. He also served in senior advisory roles to members of the United States Senat. Tom Lantos is a member of International Relations Committee, Government Reform and Oversight Committee and number of other key Congressional delegations and commissions.

Note to the Editors!

Screening of the Academy Award documentary “The Last Days” will take place, in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy, in the Press Center of MFA on Thursday, January 6 at 5:30 p.m. The movie from 1998 is about the sufferings of the five Jews, incl. Mr Lantos himself, in Hungary in 1944, when the Nazis deported and killed 425,000 people in just 60 days. Executive Producer of the movie is Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg.

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