Bush Awards Medal of Freedom to Late Rep. Lantos

President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Thursday to late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who was the only Holocaust survivor member of Congress until he passed away in February.

Bush presented the award to Lantos’s wife, Annette.

“Only in America, [Lantos] said, could a penniless survivor of the Holocaust receive an education, raise a family, and have the privilege of serving in the Congress,” Bush said at the ceremony. “That dying servant of the people then said this: ‘I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.'”

“America is equally grateful to Tom Lantos. We miss his powerful voice and his strong Hungarian accent. (Laughter.) We miss his generosity of spirit. And we miss his vigorous defense of human rights and his powerful witness for the cause of human freedom.”