Women in history. Simone Veil, courage and hope

“TOwe need a Europe capable of solidarityof independence, of cooperation. I mean solidarity between peoples, regions and individuals. Our assembly must continually press for a reduction in existing disparities “. Are almost prophetic words, those pronounced by Simone Veil in his settlement speech as president of the European Parliament.

It was July 18, 1979, and this fifty -two -year -old French was the First woman accessing the assignment in the first parliament never elected. For her, already a magistrate and minister, the challenge was in perfect harmony with his commitment in defense of minors, prisoners, women, migrants.

At sixteen he had known the horror of the concentration camps and behind the apparent sweetness of the features he had an iron character. If fate had wanted to include him among the 2500 survivors of the 76 thousand deported French Jews, Simone has repaid his luck with a constant dedication to the memory of the Shoah and against injustices. As the biopic Simone Veil – The woman of the centuryin the cinema from January 30thshe managed to reconcile the public and private dimension, marked by a long and happy wedding, three children and numerous grandchildren.

Golden childhood, then the advent of Nazism

Simone’s was a golden childhood. Born in 1927 in Nice, where the parents had moved from Paris, It is the smallest of the family, after Madeleine called Milou, Denise and Jean. Father André Jacob, architect, designs villas on the French Riviera and the family is wealthy. The holiday home in La Ciotat for Simone is a paradise: he loves the sea and enjoys attending scouts with the brothers. Life proceeds serene until 1939, when Nazi Germany invades Poland and immediately after attacking France. The country ends up divided in half, with the North under German control and the collaborationist state of Vichy to the south. André Jacob detests the Germans: during the First World War he had been a prisoner. Like Jew, he didn’t feel in danger, however. He and his wife Yvonne were secular. Before being Jewish, French citizens were felt linked to the values ​​of France. «My father could not imagine that Pétain could collaborate with the Germans. And above all that he would not defend the French who had fought the war, even if they were Jews »says Simone Veil in the book Only hope soores pain (Corbaccio).

After the fall of Mussolini, in 1943the Italians who occupied Nice give way to the Germans. Simone, fresh high school high school exam, was arrested in March 1944. His false identity document is of no use. The same fate is up to his father and brother Jean, whom the girl will never see againwhile he immediately gathered to his mother and sister Milou. Together they are brought first to the field of Drancy, then to Auschwitz Birkenau. The only one who saves himself from capture is his sister Denise, who joined the resistance. In front of the three women, unaware of their destiny, the doors of hell open. Surviving Auschwitz is often a matter of luck.

To save the girl from the gas chambers is the suggestion of a prisoner: “Of ‘you are 18 years old”. Simone, who had 16 and a half, with this lie ends up among the prisoners intended for work: loading and unloading of stones, steering activities. He is strong, he has a sports physique and is a beautiful girl. It is noticed by the director of the field, a Polish named Stenia. “You are too nice to die here,” he says, offering her to go to the Bobrek field, where the work was less tough. Simone places how condition that the mother and sister come with her. It is his second stroke of luck: Stenia accepts.

In the madness of the fields – where hunger, fatigue, sleep deprivation and humiliation aimed to destroy the dignity of human beings – family ties are an anchor to cling to not to lose hope. During the imprisonment, Simone defends his sister and mother like a tiger. The latter, however, does not make it: he dies of cheering in March 1945a month before the Bergenbelsen camp, where they had been transferred, was freed by the British. Madeleine and Simone in May return to France, where they will find Denise. The little girl from Jacob is now 19 years old and wants to turn the page. But the memory of the trauma suffered does not abandon it. For months he sleeps on the ground, persecuted by nightmares. His goal is to go back to studying. “Mom had taught us that women had to have a job.” The young woman’s dream is to become a lawyer to fight injustices. And enrolls in law.

Simone Veil, love, children and the degree in law

Galeotta is a mountain holiday. His name is Antoine Veil, he has a year more than Simone, he studies political science in Paris. Like her, she has Jewish origins and comes from a non -religious family. He is a awake, brilliant, cultured guy. Among them, a single difference: he has not been deported. After a few months, on October 26, 1946 they get married. A year later Jean was born, followed by Nicolas thirteen months later. The newly pregnant of his second child is pregnant when he gets the graduationto. With an act of courage for a deported ex, In 1949 he followed Antoine sent for work to live in Germany. Here another terrible test awaits him.

Madeleine, the most loved sister, dies in a car accident with her son, after a visit to Simone. It is a heartbreaking wound: Milou had shared the imprisonment with her, he was the only one with whom he could speak freely when, upon returning from the fields, nobody wanted to listen to the stories of the survivors. In 1954, after the birth of the third son Pierre-François and the return to his homeland, Simone clashes with Antoine, who does not want a lawyer wife. “It’s not a job for women,” he says. Reach a compromise: it will be a magistrate.

From 1957 to 1964 he worked on the penitentiary administration. For prisons directors, This young woman, who demands greater hygiene and health care for prisoners and demands more human conditions for women and minors, It is a crazy splinter. It even goes to Algeria where it remains scandalized by torture imposed on independence fighters. Let me be clear: VEIL is not a revolutionary. Has a liberal and conservative vision, but For her freedom, equality and fraternity are not empty words. Attention to the suffering of others is an imperative and does not hesitate to remove his voice even if the victim is an enemy “terrorist” of France.

In 1970, he was appointed general secretary of the Superior Council of the judiciary, But it is the task of Minister of Health, entrusted to us four years later from President Valéry Giscard of Estaing, his great opportunity. In a parliament in clear male prevalence, Veil, family mother and conservative, sides on the side of feminists who ask for a law for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. No abortion to light hearts. The parliamentary discussion takes violent tones, but Simone does not bend and in 1975 the veil law is promulgated, authorizing the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.

In Strasbourg, to repeat “never again”

After the presidency, It remains MEP until 1993Then he will return to being minister in France. He still sits in Strasbourg when the conflict breaks out in the former Yugoslaviathat leads her to indignation for the concentration camps. THEHis “never more” to any form of genocide takes the form in 2000 in the Foundation for the memory of the Shoahof which he becomes president.

Together with President Jacques Chirac In January 2005 he returned to Birkenau to commemorate the 60 years of the liberation of the field. Time flows: the last years of his life support the satisfaction – the appointment with academic of France in 2008 the pain of the loss of a son in 2002 and the Antoine husband in 2013. Simone dies on June 30, 2017.

At the behest of Emmanuel Macron, Rest at the Panthéon together with her husband, near Jean Monnetwhich as she had believed in a Europe “united in diversity” that could erase war forever.

The film and the book

At the cinema it comes out “Simone-the woman of the century“. And in the bookstore the direct testimony of the deportation.
Oliver Dahan’s biopic Simone-the woman of the centuryin preview on January 27 to celebrate the day of memory, from January 30th it is at the cinema. The film traces Simone Veil’s life from childhood, crosses the tragedy of deportation and tells his political career, without neglecting private life.

In 2006 on the initiative of the Foundation for the memory of the Shoah they were collected beyond 100 testimonies in the form of video interviews with French survivors. Simone Vel also told his memories that have become a book published in 2024 by Corbaccio and entitled Only hope soores pain. An opportunity to listen to his words: direct and powerful.

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