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Simone Veil

French politician (1927–2017) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simone Veil
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Not to be confused with Simone Weil, a French philosopher.

Simone Veil (French: [simɔn vɛj] ⓘ; née Jacob; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate, Holocaust survivor, and politician who served as health minister in several governments and was President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. As health minister, she is best remembered for advancing women's rights in France, in particular for the 1975 law that legalized abortion, today known as the Veil Act (French: Loi Veil). From 1998 to 2007, she was a member of the Constitutional Council, France's highest legal authority.

Quick Facts Member of the Constitutional Council, Appointed by ...
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A Holocaust survivor of both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, she was a firm believer in European integration as a way of guaranteeing peace. She served as president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2000 to 2007, and then as its honorary president. Among many honours, she was made a British honorary dame in 1998, was elected to the Académie Française in 2008, and in 2012 received the grand cross of the Légion d’honneur, the highest class of the highest French order of merit.

Among France's most revered figures, Simone Veil and her husband were buried at the Panthéon on 1 July 2018. Her eulogy was given by President Emmanuel Macron.[3]

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Early years and family

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Simone Jacob was born on 13 July 1927 to an atheist Jewish family in Nice. Her father André Jacob was an architect who graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and went on to win the Prix de Rome for Architecture.[4] In 1922 he married Yvonne Steinmetz, who had just passed her Baccalauréat and was about to start studying chemistry. André Jacob insisted that she abandon her studies upon marriage.[5] The family had moved from Paris to Nice in 1924, hoping to benefit from construction projects on the Côte d’Azur.[5] Simone was the youngest of four siblings, Madeleine (nicknamed Milou), born in 1923; Denise, born in 1924 and Jean, born in 1925.[6] Her father's family had come from Lorraine, while her mother’s side came from the Rhineland region and from Belgium.[7]

Simone's family was explicitly Jewish but non-practicing.[8] "Being a member of the Jewish community was never a problem. It was proudly claimed by my father, but for cultural reasons, not religious ones", she wrote in her autobiography. "In his eyes, if the Jewish people were to remain the chosen people, it was because they were the people of the Book, the people of thinking and writing."[9]

Deportation

When Germany invaded France and the Vichy regime came to power in June 1940, the family managed to avoid being deported, as Nice had been included in the Italian occupation zone.[10] Asked not to come to school by its superintendent, Simone Jacob had to study at home. As the round-up of Jews intensified, the family split up and lived with different friends under false identities. Denise left for Lyon to join the resistance, while 16-year-old Simone continued studying and passed her baccalauréat exam under her real name in March 1944.[11] The next day she was arrested by the Gestapo on her way out to meet friends and celebrate the end of her secondary education.[11] The rest of her family was also arrested on that day.

On 7 April 1944, Simone, her mother, and her sisters were sent to the transit camp of Drancy, then on 13 April were deported to Auschwitz in Convoy 71.[4] Simone’s brother and father were deported to the Baltic states in Convoy 73, never to be seen again, and thus assumed to have been murdered. Her sister Denise was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which she survived, and after the end of World War II in Europe was reunited with Simone.

On 15 April 1944, Simone arrived at Auschwitz. She later wrote that she managed to avoid the gas chamber by lying about her age and was registered for the labour camp.[12] In January 1945, Simone, along with her mother and sister, was sent on a march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where her mother died of typhus. Madeleine also fell ill but, like Simone, was saved when the camp was liberated on 15 April 1945.[13]

Return to France

Simone Jacob returned to France and started studying law at the University of Paris before going to the Institut d'études politiques, where she met Antoine Veil.[14] The couple married on 26 October 1946, and would go on to have three sons, Jean, Nicolas, and Pierre-François. They moved to live in the American occupation zone in Germany.[15] In 1952, Madeleine Jacob died with her son in a car accident after visiting Simone in Stuttgart.[16]

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Political career

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Simone Veil in Deauville, 31 May 1988.

Ministry of Justice, 1956–1974

After graduating from the Faculty of Law of Paris with a law degree, Veil spent several years practising law. In 1954, she passed the national examination to become a magistrate.[17][18] She entered the National Penitentiary Administration under the Ministry of Justice, where she held a senior position and was responsible for judicial affairs.[19] She improved women's prison conditions and the treatment of incarcerated women.[19] In 1964, she left to become the director of civil affairs, where she improved French women's general rights and status.[17] She successfully achieved the right to dual parental control of family legal matters and adoptive rights for women.[17] In 1970, she became secretary general of the Supreme Magistracy Council [fr].[19]

Minister of Health, 1974–1979

From 1974 to 1979, Veil was a Minister of Health in the governments of prime ministers Jacques Chirac and Raymond Barre: from 28 May 1974 to 29 March 1977, Minister of Health; from 29 March 1977 to 3 April 1978, Minister of Health and Social Security; and from 3 April 1978 to 4 July 1979, Minister of Health and Family.

She pushed forward two notable laws. The first, passed on 4 December 1974, facilitated access to contraception such as the combined oral contraceptive pill, which was legalized in 1967.

The second, passed on 17 January 1975, legalized abortion in France – this was her hardest-fought political initiative and the one for which she is best known. The abortion debate was particularly difficult for her because those in favour of keeping abortion illegal launched aggressive personal attacks against Veil and her family.[17] Since the passing of the law, many have paid tribute to Veil and thanked her for her courageous and determined fight.[17][20]

In 1976, Veil also helped to introduce a ban on smoking in certain public places and worked on the problem of medically underserved rural areas.[21]

European Parliament, 1979–1993

In 1979, Veil was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in the first European parliamentary election. In its first session, the new Parliament elected Veil as its first President,[21] a position she held until 1982.[22] The archives concerning her term as President of the European Parliament are deposited at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence.[23]

In 1981, Veil won the prestigious Charlemagne Prize, an award given to honour the contributions made by individuals to advancing the unity of Europe.[24]

After the end of her term as President in 1982, she remained a member of the European Parliament; she was re-elected for the last time in the 1989 election, stepping down in 1993.[22] She was Chair of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party until 1989.[22]

Between 1984 and 1992, she served on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and the Committee on Political Affairs. After stepping down from these committees, she served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and its related Subcommittee on Human Rights. Between 1989 and 1993, she was also a member of Parliament's delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, serving as its vice-chairwoman until 1992.[22]

Return to French Government, 1993–1995

From 31 March 1993 to 16 May 1995, Veil was again a member of the cabinet, serving as Minister of State and Minister of Health, Social Affairs and the city in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur.[25] In the mid-1990s, she worked to help the disabled, HIV-positive patients, and mothers of young children.[21]

Member of the Constitutional Council, 1998

In 1998, she was appointed to the Constitutional Council of France. In 2005, she put herself briefly on leave from the council in order to campaign in favour of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. This action was criticized because it seemed to contradict the legal provisions that members of the council should keep a distance from partisan politics: the independence and impartiality of the council would be jeopardized, critics said, if members could put themselves "on leave" in order to campaign for a project.[26] In response, Veil said that she, the president of the Constitutional Council and colleagues had deliberated on the issue beforehand and they had given her permission to take her leave without having to resign. Being a staunch supporter of the European project, she believed others should not "ignore the historical dimension of European integration".[26]

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Later life and death

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The coffins of Simone and Antoine Veil under the dome of the Panthéon on 1 July 2018
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Rue Soufflot on the day of the Panthéon ceremony
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The tombs of Simone and Antoine Veil in the crypt of the Panthéon

In 2003, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Criminal Court's Trust Fund for Victims. In 2007, Simone Veil supported presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. She was by his side on the day after he received 31 per cent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections that year.[27]

In 2008, Simone Veil became the sixth woman to be elected to the Académie française. She joined the Academy's forty "immortals", as the members are informally known, occupying the 13th seat, once the seat of literary figure Jean Racine. Her induction address was given in March 2010 by Jean d'Ormesson. On her sword, given to her as to every other immortal, are engraved her Auschwitz number (number 78651), the motto of the French Republic (liberté, égalité, fraternité) and the motto of the European Union, Unity in diversity (Unis dans la diversité).[28]

Veil died at her home on 30 June 2017, at age 89.[29] Her son Jean said at her public ceremony on 5 July, "I forgive you for having poured water over my head", in reference to an event where she had emptied a carafe of water over his head in disgust at what she considered to be his misogynist remarks.[21]

On 5 July 2017, Veil was honoured with a national ceremony and military honours in the courtyard of les Invalides,[30] after which she was interred next to her husband, who died in 2013, at Montparnasse Cemetery.[31] The ceremony at les Invalides was attended by President Macron, Holocaust survivors, politicians and dignitaries. In his speech during the ceremony, President Macron announced the decision to rebury Veil and her husband in the Panthéon,[32] which was done on 1 July 2018.[33]

Personal life

  • She and her husband lived in an apartment on the second floor of 11, Place Vauban [fr] in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the rive gauche. In 1983 she instigated the Club Vauban, a circle of politicians and intellectuals motivated to abolish political barriers between left and right.

Honours

National honours

Foreign honours

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Awards

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Honorary degrees

The Simone Veil Prize

In 2018, the government of France established a prize in memory of Veil to honour people who fight for women's causes.[43] The intent is to draw attention to efforts to promote women's autonomy, education, participation in leadership roles, and freedom from violence and discrimination.[43] The prize is awarded each year on 8 March, International Women's Day, with €100,000 to support work in the winner's area of concern. On 8 March 2019, the first Simone Veil Prize was awarded to Aissa Doumara Ngatansou, co-founder of the Association for the Elimination of Violence against Women (ALVF) in Cameroon.[43][44]

Other recognition

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Publications

  • Veil, S. (2009). Une vie. Ldp Litterature. Stock. ISBN 978-2-253-12776-5.
  • Veil, S. (2020). Speeches 2002-2007. Editions Le Manuscrit. ISBN 978-2-304-00423-6.
  • Veil, S.; Adler, N.; Nice, G.; Boraine, A. (2004). Genocide and Accountability: Three Public Lectures by Simone Veil, Geoffrey Nice and Alex Boraine. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 978-90-5629-364-2.
  • Veil, S.; Hausser, I. (2010). Une jeunesse au temps de la Shoah: extraits d'Une vie. Litterature & Documents (in French). Librairie générale française. ISBN 978-2-253-12762-8.
  • Veil, S. (2004). Les hommes aussi s'en souviennent. Essais - Documents (in French). Stock. ISBN 978-2-234-06831-5.
  • Veil, S. (2016). Mes combats. Bayard Culture. ISBN 978-2-227-49020-8.
  • Veil, S.; Ormesson, J. (2011). Discours de réception de Simone Veil à l'Académie française. Essais Laffont (in French). Groupe Robert Laffont. ISBN 978-2-221-11738-5.
  • Veil, S. (2019). L'Aube à Birkenau (in French). Groupe Margot. ISBN 979-10-375-0108-0.
  • Launay, C.; Soulé, M.; Veil, S. (1980). L'adoption: Données médicales, psychologiques et sociales (in French). Les milieux éducatifs de l'enfant. ISBN 978-2-402-22881-7.
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References

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External links

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