French politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, who secured the legalization of abortion in France in the 1970’s, died at her home in Paris on Friday at the age of 89 years old.

A Jewish survivor of a Nazi death camp at Ravensbruck with the prisoner number 78651 tattooed on her arm, was a fervent European and fighter for civil liberties, becoming the first directly elected president of the European parliament in 1979.

She was born Simone Jacob in Nice, on the Riviera, on July 13, 1927. Her whole family was arrested by the Germans during World War Two. Her father, mother and brother died in concentration camps.

She was best known in France for legalizing abortion when she was health minister in 1974 under then-President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. “The Veil Law” divided public opinion and made France the first mainly Roman Catholic country to legalize abortion.