Virginie Girod SEASON 2022 - 202306h00, January 26, 2023

At sixteen, Simone Jacob, by her maiden name, already dreams of doing law.

But since 1940, the Vichy government has passed a series of laws that reduce the freedoms of the Jews, and from the fall of 1943, the hunt begins on the Côte d'Azur.

Although they are not practicing, the Jacobs are forced to obtain false papers.

Despite this precaution, Simone was arrested during a street check on March 30, 1944. The family was taken to the Drancy camp, the central point of the French deportation system… What was Simone Veil's daily life like in Auschwitz-Birkenau?

In Drancy, Jews and political prisoners parade while waiting for trains to take them to the labor or extermination camps.

Sixteen-year-old Simone Jacob is pessimistic.

She does not yet know what awaits her.

Few people in France are aware of the Final Solution, the policy of extermination of the Jews, but she feels that the situation will only deteriorate...

Subjects covered: youth of Simone Veil - Shoah - deportation - Auschwitz - concentration camps - Vichy government - Second World War - Jews - Germans - Hitler - Holocaust. 

"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast. 

Writing and presentation: Virginie Girod 

- Producer: Adele Humbert 

- Artistic direction: Adèle Humbert and Julien Tharaud 

- Directed by: Clement Ibrahim 

- Original music: Julien Tharaud 

- Additional music: Julien Tharaud and Sébastien Guidis 

- Communication: Kelly Decroix 

- Distribution and writing: Eloise Bertil 

- Visual: Sidonie Mangin

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