Simone Veil : the struggles of a life

Cardenas/AP/SIPA

Published the 30.06.2017 at 17h17

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“I have the feeling that the day or I will die, it is the Shoah that I will be thinking of “. Simone Veil has just died at the age of 89 years. With a figure engraved on his left arm : 78651. A badge to remember the history that has shaped its destiny.
Simone Veil was a woman of the last century. The wars monstrous, fighting for the right of women to dispose of their body, the body of european construction.

It is still a child, she is 16 years old, when the Germans sailed with sister and his mother to a concentration camp. Direction Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp. His father and brother will be deported elsewhere. Does anyone know when and where they died. Her mother, she will be laid low by the typhus. The little Simone will escape the gas chamber by claiming to be a kapo that she was 18 years old.

His wounds do heal with time. But unlike those who will remain “crushed forever by this devastating disaster,” according to the expression of Serge Klarsfeld reports Anne Way in The World, Simone Veil will tear a commitment. To keep alive the memory of the genocide but also to lead other battles.

After studies at Sciences Po, she turned towards the bench. The Latin quarter, the students give a kick to a society locked in his certainties. It is not insensitive.

Later, in 1974, she was noticed by the prime Minister. Jacques Chirac appreciates the woman character. She will be minister of Health. A function, which will lead to the tribune of the national Assembly on 26 November 1974. Out compete those who wish to leave the abortion of the circuits underground, and those who speak ” of slaughterhouses where are piled up the corpses of little men.”
“No woman has recourse to humour, heart to abortion. It is always a drama “. The tone is set, Simone Veil begins his speech. Initially hesitant, the minister is then worn by some applause, and a deep conviction. Without doubt she know, this day, the cause of woman has made a big step. The suffering, the violence, the plight of single women, there is nothing missing in his sentences cleared against mps engoncés in their suit of flannel.

An icon is born. It will be five years as a tenant of the ministry of Health, and again in 1993 in the government of Edouard Balladur.
Moral values are ingrained, a requirement vis-à-vis itself and of the other, a character, Simone Veil does not compromise. His gaze is the showcase. And it upsets the certainties of a politics made by and for men. The most clear-sighted not mistaken. Valéry Giscard d’estaing, in fact, a flag-bearer in the 80’s, choosing to take the presidency of the european Parliament.

All causes that underlie the battles of life. But for Simone Veil, this course is not up to standard will remain that of a survivor.