SPEECH BY MADAME SIMONE VEIL
President of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah
Ceremony at the Panthéon in homage to the Righteous of France
18th January 2007
Monsieur le Président de la République,
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Righteous of France, I am addressing my words to you,
both to those who are here today and to those who could not make it, to you and also
to all those of you who saved the lives of Jews but who did not seek any recognition
for your actions.
In the name of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, in the name of all those
who owe their lives to you, I am here tonight to express our love, affection and
gratitude.
It is impossible to say how many of you there are. Some have died believing that it
was not right to reap any benefit for what they did. Others believed that their actions
had been forgotten. Others refused to be honoured, considering that they had merely
done their duty as Frenchmen and women, as Christians, as citizens of the Republic,
as men and women, saving the lives those who were being persecuted for the crime of
having been born Jewish.
Some French people take pleasure from denigrating that period in the history of our
country. I have never been one of them. I have always said, and I say it again this
evening, that there was the France of Vichy, responsible for the deportation of 77,000
Jews, of whom 11,000 were children, but that there were also all those men and
women thanks to whom three-quarters of the Jews of our country escaped the Nazis.
In other countries – in the Netherlands and in Greece for example – some 80% of the
Jewish population was arrested and murdered in the camps. In no other country
under Nazi occupation - with the exception of Denmark – was there such a
comparable uprising of solidarity that can compare with what happened in our
country.
Each of you Righteous of France to whom we pay homage today is an illustration of
the honour of our country which, thanks to you, rediscovered the meaning of
brotherhood (fraternité), of justice and of courage. Sixty years ago you did not
hesitate to put yourselves and your relatives in danger, risking imprisonment and
even deportation. Why ? For whom ? For the men, women and children whom you as
often as not did not even know, who were simply men, women and children whose
lives were in danger.
Most of you were ordinary Frenchmen. City-dwellers and farmers, atheists and
believers, young and old, rich and poor, you protected these families, gave comfort to
adults, showed tenderness to children. You acted with your hearts because you could
not stand by when they were threatened. You followed an unwritten order which took
precedence over all others. You did not do it for the honour. You are the more
honourable for that.
I must thank you this evening, Monsieur le Président de la République, for having
publicly recognized the responsibility of the State in perpetrating the heinous laws of
the Vichy regime. I must thank you too for having many times recalled the exemplary,
brave and brotherly actions of the French, some of whom are here with us this
evening.
Faced with the Nazi ideology which sought to wipe the Jewish people from history
and to efface all trace of this terrible crime, faced with those who still today deny the
facts, France is honoured today to engrave indelibly in stone in the pages of its
national history this page of illumination in the darkness of the Shoah.
The Righteous of France thought they were simply living through a historical
moment. In reality they were writing history. Of all the voices of the war, their voices
were the ones that were barely heard, hardly a whisper ; often we had deliberately to
invite them to speak. It is not before time that we hear them finally. It is time to hear
them. It is time to tell them of our deep gratitude for what they did.
For those of us who remain haunted by the memory of our loved ones who died in the
camps, without graves, for all those who dream of a better world, more just, more
fraternal, rid of the poison of antisemitism, racism and hatred, these walls will echo
from now on and for all eternity with the echo of your voices, you the Righteous of
France who give us all cause for hope.
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