Veil, iconic feminist politician, dies at 89

PARIS» Simone Veil, a survivor of Nazi death camps and a European Parliament president who spearheaded abortion rights as one of France’s most prominent female politicians, died Friday at 89, her family said.

A funeral ceremony with military honors is to be held on Wednesday at Les Invalides, site of Napoleon’s tomb, the presidential Elysee Palace said. In a measure of the nation’s esteem for Veil, French flags will be dressed in black ribbons and European flags will fly at half-staff.

“May her example inspire our compatriots,” President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

“France has lost a figure that history rarely produces,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said, as tributes to the centrist Veil poured in from across the political spectrum.

Veil said it was her experiences in the Nazi concentration camps that made her a firm believer in the unification of Europe.

“The idea of war was for me something terrible,” she told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview. “The only possible option was to make peace.”

Her own rise from a former deportee to the head of the European Parliament was a potent symbol of that sought-after peace, she said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, offering condolences in a message to Veil’s son, said she was “very grateful” for Veil’s commitment to European unification. “We will also remember her tireless ... commitment to the survivors of the Holocaust, whose fate she shared,” Merkel wrote.

A two-time Cabinet minister, Veil was best known in France for leading the heated battle to legalize abortion in the 1970s. France’s abortion rights law is still known four decades later as the “Loi Veil,” and she called it her proudest accomplishment.

In a country where many women are hesitant to call themselves feminists, Veil embraced the label. She saw herself as an advocate for the downtrodden and devoted much of her early career to improving conditions in French prisons.

Later, she became one of the most visible faces of France’s dwindling community of Holocaust survivors and spoke passionately about the need to keep the memory alive.

Born Simone Jacob in the Mediterranean port of Nice on July 13, 1927, she was one of four children.

In March 1944, the Gestapo arrested and deported Veil, her parents and all but one of her siblings.

Only Veil and her sister survived and the pair returned to France.