PARIS — Some fainted in the scorching July heat on Sunday, and many more wept as Simone Veil’s coffin was carried up to the Panthéon, France’s burial place for some of its most illustrious citizens.

But for the thousands who gathered on the heights of the city’s left bank, there was pride, gratitude and a word on all their lips: ‘‘Merci.’’ They wanted to thank Ms. Veil, the Holocaust survivor and women’s rights champion who became the fifth woman to be interred among the country’s greats, one year after her death at 89.

“France loves Simone Veil,” President Emmanuel Macron said on the steps of the Panthéon, as he faced the coffins of Ms. Veil and her husband, Antoine, a former civil servant who died in 2013 and who will rest alongside her. “It loves her in her fights, always fair, always necessary, always animated by the will for the most fragile.”

For all those who came to pay tribute, the honor felt well deserved. Ms. Veil embodied some of France’s most famous campaigns of the second half of the 20th century: its national reconciliation efforts after World War II, women’s rights, European integration and many others.