Tag Archives: Paris

Jew of the Week: Simone Veil

President of Europe

Simone Annie Liline Jacob (1927-2017) was born and raised in Nice, France. Just after finishing high school, her entire family was rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. Jacob’s mother, father, and brother perished in the Holocaust; two sisters survived. After being liberated from the camps, Jacob settled in Paris and studied law and politics. There, she met her soon-to-be husband Antoine Veil, with whom she would be married for 66 years. In 1956, she became a magistrate, and worked for the French Ministry of Justice, heading its penitentiary system. She was hailed for her role in dramatically improving prison conditions, and was known to regularly visit prisons on her days off. By 1964, Veil had become France’s Director of Civil Affairs. She worked tirelessly for women’s rights, and succeeded in finally getting French women full equality in legal matters. In 1970, Veil took over as secretary general of the Supreme Magistracy, then became Minister of Health in 1974, making her the first female minister in French history. Among her most famous laws was opening access to contraceptives, legalizing abortion (still known as “Veil’s Law”, which she intended only as a “last resort, for desperate situations”), and banning smoking in public areas. She also introduced maternity benefits, improved hospital conditions, enhanced the medical school curriculum, and worked to stop the illegal harvesting of organs from the deceased. Meanwhile, Veil worked for the European Economic Community, believing that a unified Europe was the only way to prevent another devastating war. When the EEC was reformed as the European Union, she was elected to its parliament, and shortly after, as its first president. She would serve on the European Parliament until 1993, in its Environment, Health, and Political Affairs Committees. Veil then returned to the French government, serving as Minister of State and Minister of Health until 1995. She continued her work in France and Europe until her last days, and faced a great deal of anti-Semitism throughout, including death threats and swastikas painted on her car and home. Not surprisingly, in recent years her greatest passion was Holocaust education, and she was president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. Among her many awards are the prestigious Charlemagne Prize, the Truman Award for Peace, the Legion of Honour, and the Order of the British Empire. In 2008, Veil became one of the forty “immortal” members of the illustrious French Academy. She also held 18 honourary degrees, including one from Yale and another from Yeshiva University. Sadly, Simone Veil passed away earlier this year, just shy of her 90th birthday. She was laid to rest with full military honours in the Pantheon, Paris’ famous mausoleum, alongside just 71 of France’s most cherished figures, including Voltaire and Rousseau. She remains among the most revered women in French history.

Words of the Week

I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?
– Voltaire

Jews of the Week: Margaret and H.A. Rey

Curious George

Margaret and H.A. Rey

Margarete Elisabethe Waldstein (1906-1996) was born in Hamburg, Germany, the daughter of a Jewish politician. She studied art and worked in advertising until 1935, when she fled Nazi Germany for Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, she reconnected with an old family friend who had also moved to Brazil. Hans Augusto Reyersbach (1898-1977) was born in Hamburg, too, and now working as a salesman in Rio. The two got married that same year, and resettled in Paris. Reyersbach started drawing a series of animal cartoons and was soon commissioned to write a children’s book by a French publisher. Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys, a story about a giraffe and her monkey friends, was published in 1939 under the pen name H.A. Rey. The story became popular very quickly. Particularly beloved was one of the monkey characters in the book, originally named Fifi, and commonly translated to other languages as George. The following year, Rey started working on a new manuscript featuring the curious monkey. By this point, World War II had started, and the Nazis were approaching Paris. Hans and Margaret fled the city on a pair of bicycles. The manuscript was one of the few things they took with them. The couple arrived in Spain, then Portugal, then headed back to Brazil, and finally settled in New York. Curious George was published in 1941, and like its predecessor, was very popular. Hans and Margaret went on to produce seven Curious George books together. Hans wrote and illustrated many more children’s books before passing away in 1977. Two years later, Margaret became a professor of creative writing at Brandeis University. Meanwhile, she worked on a second series of Curious George books, as well as a number of short TV films based on the stories. In 1989, she established the Curious George Foundation with two goals: to promote creative writing among children, and to prevent cruelty to animals. When she passed away in 1996, Margaret left major donations for the Boston Public Library, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and donated the family’s entire literary estate. Curious George continues to be among the most popular children’s books all over the world. A third series of Curious George stories have been produced in recent years, as well as a TV series which airs on PBS. In 2006, an animated film starring Will Ferrell and Drew Barrymore was released. Two sequels and a video game have been produced since then. Today, there is an official children’s bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts called The World’s Only Curious George Store. There is also a Curious George Live national tour, and a popular Curious George-themed water park at Universal Studios in Florida.

Words of the Week

One should always see to it that tomorrow should be much better than today.
– Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch

Jews of the Week: Maurice Druon and Joseph Kessel

Game of Thrones

Joseph Kessel

Joseph Kessel (1898-1979) was born in Argentina to a Jewish-Russian family, the son of a doctor from Lithuania. He spent his early childhood in Russia before the family moved to France. Kessel became a pilot and a writer. In the former capacity, he served valiantly in both World Wars, and in the latter, wrote over 20 novels. Many of his novels were translated into a number of languages, and were later adapted into very popular French films. Today, the Prix Joseph-Kessel is among the top literary prizes awarded for French literature. Maurice Druon (1918-2009) was Kessel’s nephew. (He went by his stepfather’s last name). He was born in Paris and raised in Normandy. Like his uncle, Druon became a writer as well. His career was interrupted by World War II, when he fought with the French Resistance, and together with his uncle, wrote the well-known anthem of the Resistance (based on an earlier Russian song).

Maurice Druon

Following the war, Druon wrote Les Grandes Familles, a bestseller adapted to an equally popular film. Druon would write two sequels to this novel, together with dozens of other important literary works. Among those is the seven-volume Les Rois Maudits (The Accursed Kings). This series was adapted to a TV show in 1972, and again in 2005. It also served as the foundation and inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted to the current hit show Game of Thrones. In addition to his writing, Druon was France’s Minister of Cultural Affairs in the 1970s. Both he and his uncle Joseph Kessel were lifelong members of the prestigious ‘Académie française’.

Words of the Week

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
– Albert Einstein