PARIS (AFP)---Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor and the first elected president of the European parliament, has joined the Academie Francaise, the elite intellectual guardians of the French language.   

The 82-year-old Veil, a former French minister who ranks among the country's most respected politicians, was only the sixth woman to join the "immortals", as the 40 members of the Academie are known.   

"My father, who died in the hell of Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp), revered the French language," a visibly moved Veil said in her inauguration speech under the grand dome of the academy on the banks of the Seine.   

"He would have been stunned to see his daughter come and take up the chair of Racine," the classic 17th-century French playwright who once sat in what is now her seat in the academy, she said.   

Dressed in the members' traditional green uniform, designed specially for her by Chanel, Veil also wore the ceremonial sword bearing the inscription "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity"   

Veil's tattooed Auschwitz prisoner number, 78651, was engraved on the sword that was presented to her by former president Jacques Chirac during a ceremony at the French Senate on Tuesday.
   

Chirac was present at her formal entry into the academy on Thursday, along with current President Nicolas Sarkozy and one of their predecessors, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who himself joined the academy in 2003.   

Raised in a Jewish family in Nice, Veil was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 when she was 16 along with her sister and mother, who died in the camp a few months before it was liberated.   

Veil returned to France in May 1945 and began rebuilding her life, earning a law degree and becoming a magistrate.   

In 1974 she became France's first female minister, responsible for health, and shepherded ground-breaking legislation legalizing abortion.   

A strong defender of Europe, Veil became the first elected president of the European parliament in 1979, a post she held for nearly three years.   

Her memoir "A Life" has become a best-seller, with more than half a million copies sold in France.   

Founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the Academie Francaise is the official authority on all matters regarding French language usage, grammar and vocabulary.