Simone Veil and the Holocaust: The words "We were shadows" revealed in a letter to Michel Marx

Screenwriter and author Michel Marx discussed on France 24, speaking with Judith, a correspondence he had with Simone Veil, a former deportee and French political figure who died in 2017.

According to remarks reported by Michel Marx, Simone Veil wrote in a letter addressed to him: "We were shadows," an expression evoking the experience of deportees in concentration camps.

Michel Marx explained that his interest in this correspondence is linked to his own family's history, with several members perishing during the Holocaust, the genocide of Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Simone Veil, herself a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen camps, devoted part of her public engagement to transmitting the memory of the Holocaust, before becoming a major political figure in France, notably as Minister of Health and president of the European Parliament.

The interview broadcast by France 24 is part of an effort to collect testimonies aimed at documenting and transmitting the history of the Holocaust through personal narratives and archival documents, such as the letter evoked by Michel Marx.