One of European Jewry’s leading lights has been honoured with a prestigious international award for her work in encouraging interfaith communication.

French Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil, who serves as President of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoa was given the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation after a fifty-year career fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.

“Simone Veil has consistently stood out for her defense of freedom, personal dignity, human rights, justice, fraternity, and the role of women in modern society,” the jury wrote in a statement.
Veil, 78, who was from 1979 until 1982 the President of the first directly-elected European Parliament, expressed her “excitement and gratefulness” for the “unexpected and surprising” award.

A former Minister in the government of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur in 1993, Simone Veil is today a member of the French Constitutional Council.

Fighting Anti-Semitism

Veil was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 17 in 1944 together with her mother and sister. Her father and brother were sent to a different camp and she never saw them again. Her mother died in Auschwitz and she and her sister were then sent to Bergen Belsen camp until their liberation in 1945.
Since then, her life has been marked by a constant struggle against intolerance, racism and anti-Semitism, and she has became an indefatigable fighter for the European remembrance and consciences of the Holocaust.

“The genocide of the Jews requires of us a constant and tireless labour of transmission, in order to ensure that what occurred then will never happen again,” Veil said in her address delivered at the Conference on Anti-Semitism and other forms of Intolerance of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, held in Cordova, Spain, last June.

One of Veil’s concerns expressed in this regards is the “negationism”, which she sees as the “most formidable form of modern anti-Semitism”, recently been rising in France and other European countries.

As President of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoa (Holocaust) since 2001, Veil takes every opportunity she has to call over the European people and public officials to be vigilant and prepared to face possible anti-Semitic and fanatic acts.

Veil firmly believes that Europe must work together to defeating anti-Semitism and intolerance with the only valid weapon to do so: education. “Nothing is more malleable than the brain of a child; you can train it irremediably to hate, or raise it well to manifest true tolerance, which is the knowledge that others have the right to exist as much as he.”

The Prince of Asturias Awards

The Prince of Asturias Awards are intended to acknowledge scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out by individuals, groups or organizations in 8 categories: communication and humanities, social sciences, international cooperation, arts, letters, scientific and technical research, concord and sports.
This year the award commemorates it’s 25th anniversary.