President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties paid tribute to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Holocaust survivor and champion of human rights, who died Monday morning.

Lantos, 80, died at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center of complications related to esophageal cancer. He disclosed his illness last month and announced he would not seek re-election to a 15th term.

His death leaves six vacancies in the 435-member House — four in Republican-held seats and two in Democratic seats. Special elections or primaries are scheduled next month for four of those six seats. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has 14 days in which to announce a special election date to choose Lantos’ successor in the heavily Democratic San Francisco-based 12th District.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Howard L. Berman, a fellow California Democrat, is in line by seniority to succeed Lantos as the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee.

Lantos, born in Budapest, was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. He was 16 when the Nazis occupied the Hungarian capital in 1944 and began to round up the country’s Jews. He was sent to a labor camp in Szob, a village north of Budapest, escaped, was captured and beaten, and escaped a second time.

He returned to the capital and found refuge in one of the apartment buildings that the audacious Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had taken over as safe havens for Jews. The blue-eyed Lantos served as a courier, secretly delivering food to other Jews.

After his election to Congress, Lantos repaid his debt to Wallenberg by pushing through legislation making the Swede, who disappeared into Soviet captivity after World War II, an honorary U.S. citizen. He also got a bust of Wallenberg installed in the Capitol.

After the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945, Lantos searched unsuccessfully for his mother and other family members, all of whom had perished. He later located childhood friend Annette Tilleman, a cousin of the famous Gabor sisters, who had fled to Switzerland. The two married and were inseparable — she came to work with him every day and frequently gave tours to his constituents.

“Tom was a man of character and a champion of human rights,” Bush said in a statement, calling him “a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men.”

For a longer version of this story, see CQ Politics.