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Simone Veil addresses the new European Parliament.
Democratic Francaise” outpolled
the others in the race in the
European Parliament elections in
France in June and as head of that
slate, Ms. Veil emerged as a major
victor not only for herself but for
the President himself and his
political following. It was a test of
whether her personal popularity
could be translated into electoral
magic and she came through with
flying colors.
It is unlikely that Giscard will
forget this woman who defeated
his opponents in the political arena
in 1979 when he runs in 1981. Few,
if any, now deny that Ms. Veil
could be Giscard’s choice for
Prime Minister were he to be
elected two-and-a-half years from
now.
One feels that much of her
strength comes from her early
tragic life, and much of her sense of
ties to the Jewish people stem from
those terrible months in the death
camps.
When the Nazis called for the
deportation of Jews from France
in World War II, she and her
family split up and went into
hiding. They adopted pseudo
nyms. Taken in by friends, Simone
Veil continued her studies. In 1944,
the day after she received her high
school diploma, she was stopped in
the street by a German policeman.
Her identity papers were
immediately recognized as
forgeries and within days the
Gestapo sent her to an ex
termination camp in Germany.
She ended up in Auschwitz, along
with her mother and one of her
sisters. Her head was shaved. The
number 78651 was tatooed on her
arm. Ms. Veil and her sister were
the only members of her family to
survive. But she and others
renewed their lives and like many
other Jews in the French Republic,
she re-entered the mainstream of
the life of France which today is
the home of 700,000 Jews, the
third largest Jewish community
outside of Israel and the fourth
largest in the world.
In her 1975 trip to Israel, Ms.
Veil paid a courtesy visit to
another woman who was a leading
figure in her country, Golda Meir.
Ms. Veil is often asked about her
ties with Judaism and Israel. In the
April 1977 issue of L'Arche, the
publication of the Fonds Social
Juif Unifie, she was quoted as
saying:
“It is a sense of basic belonging
to a community which has been
formative for us and which one
feels one has inherited,
intellectually and emotionally. It is
an overall tie with Judaism
Religion is not just a belief; it is
really a philosophy, a code of
ethics. I am aware that I belong to
this intellectual community of
which Israel is both the cradle and
the ark that enables the philosophy
I mentioned to be perpetuated and
renewed.
“More important still, I
experienced this tie with Israel in
Auschwitz. I lived with young
Polish, Czech, Slovak and
Yugoslav women who knew that
for them Israel was the only refuge.
The solidarity among us was too
great not to have left an
impression. Nevertheless, I
personally never endured those
trials with the idea of going to
Palestine. But I have lived that
great hope so intensely with those
young women that it became
something very important to me
emotionally.”
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ROSH HASHANA
September 22, 1979
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