Un vie: Simone Veil

• Author: S. Veil
• Title: Une Vie
• Published: 2007
• Language: French
• Trivia: #20BooksOfSummer Challenge
• Trivia: French Reading Challenge

 

Conclusion:

1. The biography of Simone Veil is impressive.
2. She survived the Holocaust and rose to the high echelons of
3. French judiciary, minister of health in French government,
4. President of European Parliament and  member of l’Academie française.
5. In the book Veil mentions many key French political players in the past:
6. Pompidou, Sarkozy, Giscard, Mitterrand, Chirac and Raymond Barre.
7. Strong point:  Simone Veil tells us about her family, childhood in Nice.
8. Her deportation to concentration camps lingers as the most poignant part of the book.
9. Veil recalls a Polish Kapo (female guard) saved her life by helping Simone
10. and her mother and sister to stay alive.
11. This woman who has been a mystery all of Veil’s life told her:
12. «Tu es trop belle pour mourir ici…»
13. You are to beautiful to die here.
    
14. Simone Veil dedicated the book to her family…
15. Yvonne, her mother, died in Bergen-Belsen
16. Her father André Jacob and her brother  Jean, assassinated in Lithuania.

Last thoughts:

1. I knew nothing about Simone Veil
2. …but my first words after finishing the book were;
3. “What a woman.”
4. The first and last part of the book (childhood, deportation – retirement)
5. were the best sections of the book.
6. The political references (middle section) will speak to people
7. …who have  more ‘inside information’…about France’s past governments.
8. If I compare this book to Ravensbrück by Germaine Tillion….I would
9. have to give Tillion the better marks for writing.
10. Un Vie  bothered me a little bit….
11. Un Vie is sober.
12. Veil writes free from exaggeration or speculation.
13. She he told us the sober truth…yet plein de tristesse.
14. If you want to really experience what life was like for a women
15. ….in Hitler’s WW II concentration camps….read Tillion’s book
16. Ravensbrück ….plein  de vie, plein d’élan, plein de resistance.
17. It will haunt you….as it does me.

 

State funeral for Simone Veil  July 2017:

French Republican guards carry the coffin of French politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil during a a tribute ceremony in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris, France, on July 5, 2017.
Holocaust survivors are joining France’s president and European dignitaries at a special memorial ceremony for Simone Veil, who rose from the horrors of Nazi death camps to become president of the European Parliament and one of France’s most revered politicians.