The Malta Independent on Sunday
Intellectual powerhouse and icon
Icannot let more days pass without my paying my own small tribute to Simone Veil the champion of the struggle for women’s rights and the construction of Europe who died at her home just two weeks before her 90th birthday on 30 June. Having lost beloved members of my family fairly early in their lives I am not going to lament her death especially since she lived a fruitful life and a very long one, having experienced both beauty and terror. ***
I have been a ‘long-distance’ admirer of Simon Veil for many years. In a way this is illogical since in 1973 not only did she push through laws to liberalise contraception, with the pill not only authorized but reimbursed by the social security system but a year later she led the charge in the national assembly for the legalization of abortion. There she braved a volley of insults some of them liking abortion to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. ***
The legislation the Loi Veil is considered a cornerstone of women’s rights and secularism in France. It was the first mainly Roman Catholic country to legalise abortion. Not much to be proud of in my view.
A lawyer, Simone Veil in fact wrote the law herself. This was her hardest political fight and the one for which she is best known. Those who were against it launched aggressive and personal attacks against her and her family. It was a courageous and determined fight and she won it.
Addressing the National Front in 1979 she is quoted as saying: “I’m not afraid of you. I’ve survived worse. You’re only the SS with smaller feet.” ***
I have to admit that I have always found it difficult to be a fervent admirer of this intellectual powerhouse who had fought so fervently for the legalization of abortion, and have asked myself again and again how could she when members of her family had died in concentration camps. After such an experience one must surely opt for life and not death especially of the innocent, as those members of her family were, exterminated so cruelly because they happened to be Jews.
But apart from that I continue to be an admirer. First of all because I can imagine how difficult it was for her to achieve so much at a time when there was much more mysogeny and obstacles which she managed to overcome through sheer determination. Also she survived Auschwitz and the death of both her parents and brother. She then lost her remaining sister in a car accident when Milou was only 50 and with whom she was very close. They had shared the same bitter experiences and had the same scar.
Often survival is achievement enough let alone going on to do so many great things inspite of the dreadful suffering she had to live with. ***
In an interview on television in 2005 she spoke of her experience and her losses: ‘Sixty years later I am still haunted by the images, the odours, the cries, the humiliation, the blows and the sky filled with smoke of the crematoriums.” Certainly, there are experiences which are engraved in our memory and only death will erase them. We continue to live inspite of them.
Her determination was legendary. Reflecting on her famously resolute character in an eulogy, her son Jean Veil said: ‘That determination was the backbone; the armour that helped you survive hell.” In life she was repeatedly voted one of France’s most trusted public figures. ***
She took her fight for women’s rights seriously. When she worked at the Ministry of Justice she improved women’s prison conditions and the treatment of incarcerated women. She was feminist in the sense of solidarity with women. She has said that she feels closer to women and was influenced by them. This is probably as a result of her close relationship with her mother. In various interviews she recalls that women helped each other in the concentration camps in a generous, unselfish way which was not the same with men. The capacity for resistance of the socalled weaker sex was much greater than that of men. She herself proved her capacity for resistence which helped her survive the camp. (She was arrested by German authorities days after she had received the results of her baccalauréat on 28 March 1944.) ***
She has worked with a number of Prime Ministers and Presidents. In a statement former President Giscard d’Estaing, now 91, said Veil’s exemplary life and work remained an inspiration for people today. ‘She was an exceptional woman who had known the greatest happiness and the greatest misfortunes of life,’ he said.
She strongly believed in a united Europe and worked ceaselessly for its achievement. Veil was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in the 1979 election. In its first session the new Parliament elected her as its President. As well as being the first president of the elected Parliament she was the first female President since the Parliament was created in 1952. Paying tribute after her death European Parliament President Antonio Tajani referred to her as ‘the great President of the European Parliament conscience of the EU, campaigner against anti-Semitism and defender of women’s rights.’ ***
Simone Veil was elected to the Academie française in November 2008, the sixth woman ever to do so. She joined the Academie’s 40 “immortals” at their 13th seat, originally the seat of Jean Racine. On her sword given to her as to every other immortal, is engraved her Auschwitz number (78651), the motto of the French Republic ( liberté, egalité, fraternité), and the motto of the European Union ( Unis dans la diversité). ***
She has received the rare honour of being inducted into the Panthéon and has become only the 5th woman to be buried in the Paris monument together with other luminaries such as Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Voltaire.
President Macron has bestowed the Panthéon honour to Veil’s husband Antoine, too. He died in 2013. In the President’s words: ‘to show the immense gratitude of the French people to one of its most loved children.’
Simone Veil an icon and role model for women everywhere.