Tribute to Simone Veil, qui est décédée le 30 juin 2017 à 89 ans 13 July 1927 - 30 June 2017

Survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, first president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, politician with an exemplary career, health minister committed to the fight for abortion and activist for a united Europe, Simone Veil died this morning at the age of 89.

With great emotion, the Shoah Memorial, which she inaugurated alongside Jacques Chirac in January 2005, wishes to pay tribute to her.

© Pierre-Emmanuel Weck

Raised within a united Jewish family, settled in France for many generations and for whom religion really had no place, Simone Jacob n’avait que 16 ans quand elle a été arrêtée on March 30, 1944 by the Gestapo in the center of Nice and taken to the Hotel Excelsior, German headquarters. Dans les heures qui suivirent, la famille Jacob fut arrêtée par le Gestapo, à l’exception de sa sœur Denise Jacob.

Simone first transits through the Drancy camp before being deported with her mother Yvonne and her sister Milou to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. His other sister Denise, a resistant, will be sent to Ravensbrück.

Portrait of Simone Veil. France, around 1940

Arrival at Auschwitz by convoy No. 71 on April 15, 1944, Simone, qui n’était alors qu’une jeune fille, prétend avoir 18 ans, ce qui lui permettra d’échapper à la mort immédiate. Nous tatouons le numéro 78651 on his left arm. Simone Veil dira un jour que c’était à ce moment qu'elle mesurait the threatening and definitive scope of the negation de son identité. This number 78651 will be engraved later on his academician sword.

On 15 May 1944, Simon’s father, André Jacob and his brother, Jean Jacob, are deported to Lithuania by convoy No. 73. They will not return.

Simon’s hair will be cut short but not shaved, an unexplained thing, comme tant d’autres à Auschwitz. With their sister and mother, they are sent to the quarantine camp where they carry out masonry work aimed at extending the railway ramp to the gas chambers. Simone befriends other young women, like Marceline Loridan, with whom she will remain extremely close all her life.

"I wanted to grow up, like all the young people of my age. But we do not grow up in Auschwitz. À l'âge des promesses, j’ai perdu beaucoup d'illusions à ce sujet.
(Simone Veil, preface to the Auschwitz Album)

In July 1944, with the help of a Polish auxiliary at the camp who found her 'too pretty to die here', Simone was sent with her sister and her mother to the annex camp of Bobrek, a few kilometers from Auschwitz, where they were assigned to exterior maintenance work. A la « sanatorium » sans appel, moins de morts, plus de soupe, la Siemens factory surveille la performance.

On 18 January 1945, following the bombing of Auschwitz by the Soviet army, the SS evacuated the camp. A long walk of 700 km by minus thirty degrees then begins. Milou, Yvonne and Simone finally arrive, exhausted but alive, in Bergen-Belsen. But, a mois avant la libération du camp, le 15 mars 1945, Yvonne meurt de typhus dans les bras de Milou.

Simone will then protect her sister until their liberation, on April 15, 1945, by the British army, qui sera not elicit "any cry of joy. Only silence and tears.

Simone and Madeleine Jacob return to France on May 23, 1945. They meet their sister Denise, the only other survivor in the family. The question of memory will arise very quickly for Simone.

“The Holocaust is not just about Auschwitz: it covered all the European continent in blood. The process of dehumanization completed, it inspires an inexhaustible reflection on the consciousness and dignity of men, because the worst is always possible

In 1945, Simone Jacob enrolled at the Faculty of Law and at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris. She meets Antoine Veil there and marries him in October 1946. She enters the judiciary in 1956 as a senior civil servant and will be, in 1970, the first female secretary general of the magistrates' union. En mai 1974, elle a été nommée ministre de la santé dans le gouvernement de Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Alone against all, she legalized abortion in 1975 and then became, in 1979, the first woman to hold the position of president of the European Parliament.

Singular and strong figure of French and European political life, she exercises power without ever wanting it. She took the time to write her autobiography, A life, thus ensuring her "immortality" by entering under the dome of the French Academy on March 18, 2010, at the age of 82. But all these honors and her political commitment will never make her lose sight of the duty to remember the Shoah, which she will fulfill throughout her life.

Simone Veil on the forecourt, le jour de la conférence de presse sur le rassemblement mondial des survivants juifs de l’holocauste, au Mémorial de l’Inconnu Juif Martyr, Paris IV, France, 16/04/1981

Faithful to what she considers to be the duty of the survivors of the death camps, she then testifies for the Jewish martyrs, and also in behalf of all humanity.

In the 80s, Simone Veil became a member of the board of directors of the Memorial of the unknown Jewish Martyr and the Jewish Historical Documentation Center. She will become its vice-president and then be one of the founding members of the Shoah Memorial. same time, she was the first president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah from 2001 to 2007. She remained its honorary president.

Joseph Burg, Jacques Chirac, Simone Veil and Lucien Finel at the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, during the inauguration ceremony of the renovated Memorial, Paris IV, 27/03/1992

Pendant toutes ces années, Simone Veil continue son combat : to pass on the memory of the Shoah to future generations. À l’occasion du 60e anniversaire de la libération du camp d’Auschwitz, on 27 January 2005, the day of the inauguration of the Shoah Memorial in Paris, Simone Veil delivers a speech that resonates like a vibrant appeal of a survivor to future generations.

Je considère qu'il est de mon devoir d'expliquer inlassablement aux jeunes générations, à l’opinion publique de nos pays et aux responsables politiques comment six millions de femmes et d'hommes sont morts, dont un million et demi d'enfants, simplement parce qu'ils sont nés juifs (...) If the Shoah constitutes a unique phenomenon in the history of humanity, le poison du racisme, de l’antisémitisme, du rejet des autres, la haine ne sont les prérogatives d’aucune époque, d’aucune culture ni d’aucun peuple. They threaten to vary degrees and in various forms, on a daily basis, partout et toujours, dans le siècle passé ainsi que dans celui qui s'ouvre. That world is yours. The ashes of Auschwitz serve as a breeding ground for it.

Woman of conviction, woman of heart, survivor of the Shoah, Simone Veil has always been concerned about human dignity and others. And if a word is needed to summarize one’s life, it is indeed the word dignity that we choose today.

All our thoughts go to his loved ones and family.

TESTIMONY OF SIMONE VEIL INTERVIEWED BY SERGE MOATI IN 2004 FOR THE SHOAH MEMORIAL

Testimony of Simone Veil for the Spielberg Foundation