The announcement by Congressman Lantos that he is battling cancer and will retire from the House will be greeted with sadness here in New York. The congressman may represent a district in California, but the chairman of the foreign affairs committee has built, over a long career, a record as a proponent of human rights that has resonated across the country — and beyond. All the more so because of how it has been informed by his own experiences during the German war against the Jews in World War II, when Mr. Lantos was but a teenager in Hungary.

We haven’t always agreed with Mr. Lantos, but his voice has been exceptionally important in recent years as the tenor of the leftist camp has hardened against Israel, of which he has been a courageous defender. His voice has been raised not only within the Congress but at the United Nations, where Mr. Lantos has been active in exposing anti-Semitism at the Durban Conference and in helping to clean up the scandals of oil-for-food. His reach has been extraordinary for any congressman.

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress,” Mr. Lantos said in a statement moved by the Associated Press. “I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.” It’s a gratitude that will be fully reciprocated as he battles his illness, and all New Yorkers will be thinking of him and wishing success to a Democrat who has been an inspiring figure.