It is a river interview of 5h30, in which Simone Veil, then 79 years old, retraces the thread of her destiny filled with tragedies and fights.
In this testimony recorded in 2006 in the studios of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA), the former minister and president of the European Parliament recounts her happy childhood in Nice, then the start of the war, her deportation, her arrival in Auschwitz under the barking of dogs, work, mutual aid and horror in the camps, the loss of his father, his mother and his brother, his duty to transmit and his permanent fear of the trivialization of the Holocaust …
This precise, fascinating and exceptionally powerful interview, entitled, in the words of Simone Veil herself, “Only hope soothes pain”, will be broadcast in its entirety on October 19 on the ina.fr website.
It will also be available in a podcast of four 30-minute episodes and in a book, published by Flammarion, which will be released simultaneously.
Simone Veil had recorded this exchange as part of the collection of testimonies from around a hundred former deportees that she had undertaken when she was president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.
Produced a few months before the publication of "Une Vie", his autobiography published in 2007 and sold more than 500,000 copies, it had never been broadcast.
Read also “Simone Veil, dawn at Birkenau”: the intimate secrets of a great lady
“Until her death, Simone Veil took it to heart to carry her word herself,” underlines Laurent Vallet, CEO of INA.
After the death of the former member of the Constitutional Council, on June 30, 2017, the INA obtained the agreement of Jean and Pierre-François, the sons of the former minister, who signed the preface to the book "Seul l 'hope soothes the pain'.
A few days before the release of this document, “Simone, le voyage du siècle” will be released in cinemas on October 12, a biopic directed by Olivier Dahan with Elsa Zylberstein and Rebecca Marder.
“It's a very nice coincidence, assures Laurent Vallet.
The public will be able, through fiction or an interview, to rediscover the life and strength of Simone Veil's testimony.
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