Simone Veil, 89; French lawmaker survived Holocaust

Simone Veil, a French survivor of the Holocaust who became one of her country's most influential stateswomen, shepherding the 1975 law that allowed abortion in France, pushing prison reform and other social causes, and promoting continental unity as the first female president of the European Parliament, died June 30. She was 89.

Her death was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron. French media reported that she died at her home in Paris. The cause was not immediately available.

Veil (pronounced "vay") stood at the center of French politics for more than four decades, ever since President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing elevated her from the civil service to become health minister from 1974 to 1979. It was in that role that she overcame political obstacles and, at times, personal insults to establish abortion rights with the provision still today commonly called "the Veil law."

She led the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982 — a role that made her, along with Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Indira Gandhi of India, among the highest-ranking elected women in the world at the time. She returned to serve again as health minister from 1993 to 1995 under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur.

Veil's titles, however vaunted, were insufficient to convey her importance in French and European society. She rose to political power at a time when most governments, including her own, were dominated by men.

It was also a time of reckoning, as much of Europe confronted the slaughter of 6 million Jews that had taken place during the Holocaust. The process was particularly searing in France, where the Vichy regime had collaborated with Nazi Germany.

Veil, who was Jewish, had been deported at 16 to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp located in Poland, with much of her family. She represented "the reconciliation both of French and West Germans and of European Christians and Jews," a Washington Post reporter wrote when Veil became parliament president.

Her experiences during the war years informed her political positions, particularly her efforts to improve the lives of prisoners, with whom she said she identified, and to defend children and the mentally ill, two classes among those targeted by the Nazis.

She spoke compellingly of the need to never forget the crimes of the Holocaust. But it was often noted that she tended to wear long sleeves to cover the number, 78651, that had been tattooed on her forearm when she arrived at Auschwitz. It was perhaps a too-constant reminder of a darker Europe.

"The idea of war was for me something terrible," she told the Associated Press in 2007. "The only possible option was to make peace."