Simone Veil
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Simone Veil DBE |
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|---|---|
 |
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| 12th President of the European Parliament | |
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In office July 1979 – 1982 |
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| Preceded by | Emilio Colombo |
| Succeeded by | Piet Dankert |
| Minister of Health | |
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In office 27 May 1974 – 4 July 1979 |
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| President | Valéry Giscard d'Estaing |
| Prime Minister |
Jacques Chirac Raymond Barre |
| Preceded by | Michel Poniatowski |
| Succeeded by | Michel Poniatowski |
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In office 29 March 1993 – 18 May 1995 |
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| President | François Mitterrand |
| Prime Minister | Edouard Balladur |
| Deputy | Philippe Douste-Blazy |
| Preceded by | Bernard Kouchner |
| Succeeded by | Elisabeth Hubert |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Simone Annie Liline Jacob 13 July 1927 Nice, France |
| Political party |
UDF (1995-1997) UDI (Since 2012) |
| Spouse(s) | Antoine Veil |
| Profession | Lawyer, politician |
| Religion | Judaism |
Simone Veil, DBE (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj]; born 13 July 1927) is a French lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France.
A survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she lost part of her family, she is the Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. She was elected to the Académie française in November 2008. She is best known for pushing forward the law legalizing abortion in France on 17 January 1975.
Veil was born Simone Annie Liline Jacob, the daughter of a Jewish architect in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. In March 1944, Veil's family was deported, Simone, her mother and one sister, Milou, to Auschwitz-Birkenau then Bergen-Belsen where her mother Yvonne died shortly before the camp's 15 April 1945 liberation. Veil's father and brother also died; they are last known to have been sent on a transport to Lithuania. Veil's other sister, Denise, who had been arrested as a member of the Resistance survived her imprisonment in Ravensbrück. Milou died in a car crash in the 1950s. Veil returned to speak at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2005 for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.
Having obtained her baccalauréat in 1943 before being deported, she began the study of law and political science at Sciences Po and at the University of Paris, where she met her future husband Antoine Veil. The couple married on 26 October 1946, and have three sons, Jean, Nicolas, and Pierre Francois. Antoine Veil died on 12 April 2013, at the age of 86 after 66 years of marriage.
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