Simone Veil — president eu parl. with roots in the Russian Empire
Simone Veil was a French politician and Holocaust survivor who served as Health Minister (1974-1979) and President of the European Parliament (1979-1982). She is best known for the Veil Law (1975) which legalised abortion in France — one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in modern French history — and for her moral authority as a Holocaust survivor.
Tracing the roots — Nice (Rus Roots)
Her father André Jacob had Russian-Jewish ancestry — his family traced to the Jewish communities of the Russian Empire. Growing up in Nice in a secular Jewish household, Veil was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Her survival and her subsequent public life — bringing a survivor's moral weight to French political life — is one of the most extraordinary trajectories in post-war European history.
The Holocaust survivor & icon had roots in the Jewish diaspora (Stein family).
.svg?width=900)
Nice (Rus Roots). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"I never forgot that I was Jewish. But I discovered I was French the day I was deported."