Simone Veil’s Message for Future Generations

Survivor of the Holocaust; first woman to preside over the European Parliament; Minister of Health under the Chirac government; mother of the law legalizing abortion in France in 1974; icon of the feminist struggle. Simone Veil (1927-2017) left her mark on the 20th century through her strength in the face of injustice, and seven years after her death, her political and literary legacies endure.

Éditions Albin Michel has released a previously unpublished testimony, Pour les Générations Futures (For Future Generations), which Veil delivered at a conference in April 2005. A member of the Constitutional Council at the time, she spoke to students at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris. (The book includes a preface by philosopher Dan Arbib, who organized the lecture.) Before her audience, the former deportee evoked the themes and concerns that were most dear to her: the memory of the Holocaust and the fate of survivors. 

“One might think that, as time goes by, we’d think less about it. That, because we’ve rebuilt our lives, found new interests, seen the birth of our children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, the past is definitively behind us. In reality, we’re becoming aware that, generally speaking, things are becoming increasingly difficult,” she declared.

Veil spoke of the need for European countries to reconcile with one another, and the necessity of identifying crimes in order to prevent them: “When we talk about genocide, when we talk about crimes against humanity, it’s very important to specify what they are. Because I believe that we can only prevent certain events if we identify the reasons for them. Because, unfortunately, these reasons do exist. So what is the reason? Why is this happening? Is it hatred of a social class, to get rid of it, as in Cambodia, for political ends? Is it ethnic hatred? Has the situation degenerated as a result of conflict?”

Veil explained the role that both fiction and young people play in remembering the tragedies of the past, as well as the dangers of the Internet – prescient words which ring true today. “In reality, there are very few historians in any country who support Holocaust denial. On the other hand, we have to reckon with the Internet, which is a political denialism. You can say whatever you like, it’s fair game, no one will go and check. There is an isolated, uncultivated public, some of whom don’t even know how to read, who take these inventions at face value. These propaganda texts, sometimes entire books, are part of school curricula in some countries. But it’s their distribution on the Internet that represents a great danger,” she analyzed.

In very few words (the book is 160 pages), Veil created a prophetic text, both intimate and political. This testimony against anti-Semitism is more than necessary today, so that future generations do not forget a past that is still living memory.

At the presentation of the publishing house’s new literary season in early June, Veil’s son, Pierre-François Veil, said: “I’m tempted to say that current events make the initiative of the publisher Albin Michel even more important.” The book’s preface states that the author’s heirs have asked the publisher to donate all royalties to the museum Mémorial de la Shoah.

At age 16, before becoming an emblem of French political life, Veil was arrested with her family in Nice in 1944, then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she lost her parents and brother. Throughout her life, she kept the number 78651, tattooed on her left arm by the Nazis, as a symbol of her will to live, and retained her energy as a survivor to fight for remembrance and the causes of women.

Veil passed away at the age of 89 and was inducted into the Panthéon in 2018, “So that her struggles, her dignity and her hope remain a compass in the troubled times we are living through,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared at the time.

Pour les Générations Futures is now available to read in France.