Memorial to iconic Holocaust survivor Simone Veil

TALI FEINBERG

The event was unusual for two reasons: because the South African Jewish community and the SAHGF have no direct ties to Veil, and it was one of the few memorials to her that took place outside of France.

“I was reading about the passing of Mademoiselle Veil on the morning of July 1 2017 [she died the previous day] when the phone rang,” explained SAHGF Director Richard Freedman at the Cape Town event. “It was holocaust survivor Helene Joffe, asking that we do something to commemorate the loss of this extraordinary woman, and in so doing, honour all survivors,” he continued.

The SAHGF worked with partner organisations to set up tribute events in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Their efforts were recognised by Jacques Fredj, director of the Holocaust museum in Paris, Mémorial de la Shoah, who travelled to South Africa specially for the occasion.

In his address, Fredj delved into Veil’s history, describing her family as a typical Jewish French one – not observant, but having a connection to their Jewish history and culture. “They didn’t go to synagogue, but had a feeling of belonging to a people,” he explained.

The Nazi machine did not differentiate, and in 1944, Simone Veil (who was born Simone Jacob in Nice, France), a teenager at the time, was deported to the Drancy concentration camp with her family. Her father and brother died; they are last known to have been sent on a transport to Lithuania. One of her sisters, Denise, had been travelling at the time and joined the resistance, but Veil, her sister Milou and her mother Yvonne were deported to Auschwitz.

She was fortunate to be with her mother and sister, and they worked as slave labourers. In a documentary about her life, we see Veil discussing this with a fellow survivor, who says that she felt sorry for Veil having her mother with her there, and that in the concentration camp world, it was better to be alone.

But for Veil, her mother was her world, and when she passed away from typhus at Bergen-Belsen near the end of the war (probably at a similar time, and nearby to Anne and Margot Frank), Veil never really recovered. “Her mind was always at Auschwitz, even 20 years later,” said Fredj.

But her grief also became her “driving force”. She and her sisters survived the war, and she went on to marry, raise a family, study law and go into politics. It was then that she became France’s heath minister, the first elected president of the European Parliament and a member of the Constitutional Council of France.

Regarding this work, Veil says in the documentary that her parents would have been horrified at the thought of a united Europe. However, after her experiences during the war, Veil saw this as the only way forward.

She is best known for working towards the law legalising abortion in France on January 17 1975, facing abuse and fierce attacks on herself and her family as she worked to create safe healthcare for women in her country.

“She was a woman of strong convictions,” said Christophe Farnaud, the French ambassador to South Africa. He was one of the many dignitaries attending the Cape Town event. “These attacks [at the time of the abortion law] were often anti-Semitic, which must have been very hurtful for her, but she did not back down.”

Joffe, who survived the Holocaust as a child by hiding, and now lives in Cape Town, spoke about her admiration for Veil: “We felt like she was a member of our family. We were from the same region of France and went to the same place for summer holidays. We respected her fortitude, courage, love for humanity, elegance and forgiveness. We somehow thought she was eternal. She was a French Jewish woman and an icon in every way.”

Veil faced much tragedy during her life, including the suicide of her son Nico and the death of her sister Milou in a car accident. Yet until the end, she remained strong, positive and deeply invested in her Judaism.

She died at home on June 30 2017, two weeks before her 90th birthday. She was honoured by a full military parade and a ceremony attended by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. The words of the Kaddish are inscribed on her grave.