Crusader’s Career Shaped by Persecution as Youth : Soviets Signaled Release Through Rep. Lantos

When the Soviet Union finally decided that it would release dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, one of the first clear signals it sent to the United States was through California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo)--a man whose own experience with religious persecution has shaped his political career.

It was more than a month ago that Lantos, chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, his wife, Annette, and Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.) went to the lakeside home near East Berlin of Wolfgang Vogel, an East German lawyer who had been an intermediary in earlier East-West prisoner swaps.

Expecting the usual “exceptionally unfriendly and exceptionally negative” response he had received in earlier appeals for Shcharansky, Lantos was startled when Vogel said that he had “a mandate--that’s the word he used--to bring (about) this release,” Lantos recalled Wednesday. “Vogel told us exactly when it would happen.”

Kept It Quiet

Although Lantos often has sought publicity for his human rights activities, he and Gilman decided that they must keep the news quiet. They shared it only with key State Department officials, who had begun to pick up on other signs that the Soviets might be willing to free the dissident, who had been convicted of spying for the United States.

And Wednesday, even after Shcharansky was safely in Israel, Lantos carefully tempered his enthusiasm. “The jury is still out,” he said. “The question now is whether this is the beginning of a trend or just a calculated public relations episode.”

Human rights activists, who estimate that hundreds of thousands of Jews would like to leave the Soviet Union, contend that the release of Shcharansky--who was arrested for allegedly spying for the United States and had come to symbolize the plight of all other Jews who claim Soviet persecution--is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture.

They say that the number of Jews allowed to leave has declined since President Reagan’s summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, falling from about 100 a month then to only 79 last month.

Nonetheless, pressing for Shcharansky’s release had been a top priority for Lantos, 58, who has focused his five-year congressional career on bringing attention to human rights issues globally.

New Target

But even as Shcharansky was heading for Israel and freedom Tuesday, Lantos had turned his sights on alleged abuses of an organization called Iran Relief Fund. Lantos led 30 congressmen who wrote 13 state governors Tuesday urging investigations of the fund-raising activities of the group, which they said is a front for a terrorist organization accused of assassinating seven Americans in Iran during the 1970s.

Lantos’ dedication was born in his youth during World War II in the streets of Nazi-held Budapest. As a blond teen-ager who could pass as Aryan, he twice escaped from Nazi labor camps and ferried food and messages past Nazi guards to the Hungarian underground.

Noting that he brings unique experiences to Capitol Hill, Lantos said: “If I have any role in Congress, it is to sensitize the Congress and the American people to this tremendous responsibility we all have” to fight for the rights of the oppressed.

In his first year in Congress, he won approval of a resolution granting honorary U.S. citizenship to Raoul Wallenberg, the wealthy Swedish businessman whose diplomatic sleight of hand during the war was credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews--among them Lantos and Annette Tilleman, the young girl who later became his wife.

Caucus Founder

To involve his colleagues in fighting persecution worldwide, he and Rep. John E. Porter (R-Ill.) co-founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which has drawn members across the political spectrum.

Some in Congress reportedly are put off by Lantos’ aristocratic Old World manner and the pontifical tone in which the former San Francisco State University economics professor sometimes frames his anti-Soviet rhetoric.

“He’s a double-edged sword,” said one official of a human rights organization, who requested anonymity. “He does a lot of good, but at the same time he rubs a lot of people the wrong way.”

But, the activist added, “you can’t question his commitment. . . . He is effective in the means that are available to make this issue public, to draw attention to the problem. He’s a good friend to the movement.”