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>Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and abortion pioneer, dies aged 89
>Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor who played a leading role in legalising contraception and abortion inFrance, has died aged 89.
>Veil, an icon of French politics and the first president of the European parliament, died at home, her son Jean said.
In 1974 she led the charge in the national assembly for the legalisation of abortion, where she braved a volley of insults, some of them likening terminations to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.
>Expressing his condolences on Friday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, tweeted: “May her example inspire our fellow citizens as the best of what France can achieve.”
>Born Simone Jacob in Nice, Veil was deported to the Nazi death camp at 17 with her entire family.
>Her father and brother were last seen on a train to Lithuania and her mother, Yvonne, died in Belsen just before that camp was liberated in 1945.
> Veil and her sisters were among only 11 survivors of 400 Jewish children deported from her region.
>It was her experiences in the Nazi concentration camps that made her a firm believer in the unification ofEurope.
>“Sixty years later I am still haunted by the images, the odours, the cries, the humiliation, the blows and the sky filled with the smoke of the crematoriums,” Veil said in 2005.
