Coin set BU – Simone Veil

Simone Veil was born in 1927 as Simone Jacob in Nizza into a Jewish family. During the German occupation of France, she was arrested in 1944 and deported with members of her family. After Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was sent to further camps; when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, she was seventeen years old. Her parents and her brother did not survive the National Socialist persecution. Veil later spoke publicly about the Shoah and was committed to preserving its memory.

After the war, she studied law and political science. As a judge and civil servant, she worked, among other places, in the French prison administration. There, she focused particularly on the conditions of women in detention. In 1974, she became Minister of Health in the government of President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

The legislation on abortion named after her emerged in a highly contested political and social situation. Abortions were generally punishable by law in France, but were nevertheless performed, often under dangerous conditions. Veil defended the bill before the National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in November 1974. She was subjected to fierce personal and, in some cases, antisemitic attacks. The law permitted an abortion within a specified period and under certain conditions. It initially entered into force on a trial basis and was later confirmed permanently.

Veil’s European engagement was connected with the first direct election of the European Parliament. This was intended to give Parliament stronger democratic legitimacy. Her biography linked the memory of the National Socialist crimes with the belief that European cooperation could prevent new wars.

France issued the coin one year after Veil’s death. In the same year, she and her husband Antoine Veil, who had died previously, were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. There, the Republic honours figures whose lives are connected with its political and social history. The coin issue was thus part of the state commemorative events of 2018.