A Life: Simone Veil

About the Author:

Simone Veil, a former French politician, was born Simone Jacob in 1927. She was deported with her family to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, her mother, father and brother all dying in captivity. After the war she studied law and political science and became Minister for Health (1974–1979) in the government of Jacques Chirac, where she fought to legalise abortion. She was elected the first President of the European Parliament (1979 –1985) and later returned to domestic government as Minister for Social Affairs, a position she held until 1995. She was elected to the French Academy in November 2008.

Review:

'This is a riveting memoir by an extraordinary woman. With exemplary forthrightness, Simone Veil charts her trajectory from her pre-war childhood in a secular Jewish family in Nice, through the misery of her year in Auschwitz and into the cut and thrust of French and European politics. This document of a life is also a compact history of post-war France.' -- Lisa Appignanesi 'The life story is a debased genre, but occasionally someone writes one who actually has something to say. Simone Veil is one of those... the small publishing firm Haus is to be congratulated on making available in English this account of a great Frenchwoman's life.' -- Denis McShane The Observer Simone Veil is probably best-known in France for having guided into being the 1975 law legalising abortion...30 years later, thi monumental achievement remains controversial in some circles...shamefully, the head of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, in a letter to the Polish President in 2005 opposing her presence at the 60th anniversary commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz, said that Veil 'was to be held responsible for a mass-murder of human life far exceeding' that of the Nazis. -- Natasha Lehrer The JC (Jewish Chronicle) 20101218

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