Un vie: Simone Veil
- Author: S. Veil
- Title: Une Vie
- Published: 2007
- Language: French
- Trivia: #20BooksOfSummer Challenge
- Trivia: French Reading Challenge
Conclusion:
- The biography of Simone Veil is impressive.
- She survived the Holocaust and rose to the high echelons of
- French judiciary, minister of health in French government,
- President of European Parliament and member of l’Academie française.
- In the book Veil mentions many key French political players in the past:
- Pompidou, Sarkozy, Giscard, Mitterrand, Chirac and Raymond Barre.
- Strong point: Simone Veil tells us about her family, childhood in Nice.
- Her deportation to concentration camps lingers as the most poignant part of the book.
- Veil recalls a Polish Kapo (female guard) saved her life by helping Simone
- and her mother and sister to stay alive.
- This woman who has been a mystery all of Veil’s life told her:
- «Tu es trop belle pour mourir ici…»
- You are to beautiful to die here.
- Simone Veil dedicated the book to her family…
- Yvonne, her mother, died in Bergen-Belsen
- Her father André Jacob and her brother Jean, assassinated in Lithuania.
Last thoughts:
- I knew nothing about Simone Veil
- …but my first words after finishing the book were;
- “What a woman.”
- The first and last part of the book (childhood, deportation – retirement)
- were the best sections of the book.
- The political references (middle section) will speak to people
- …who have more ‘inside information’…about France’s past governments.
- If I compare this book to Ravensbrück by Germaine Tillion….I would
- have to give Tillion the better marks for writing.
- Un Vie bothered me a little bit….
- Un Vie is sober.
- Veil writes free from exaggeration or speculation.
- She he told us the sober truth…yet plein de tristesse.
- If you want to really experience what life was like for a women
- ….in Hitler’s WW II concentration camps….read Tillion’s book
- Ravensbrück ….plein de vie, plein d’élan, plein de resistance.
- 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 Frances most revered politicians.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks