So here it is if you want to look at one page of the names of people that I assume contributed to the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, and their addresses.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19W2kerD4WzWNSyPg4xcbkA4mDt5OXREHLet2nPi8i4Q/edit?usp=sharing
PARIS,
July 6 — One hundred years ago this month, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a
French Jewish army officer who had spent five years on Devil's Island
for high treason and an additional seven years trying to clear his name,
was absolved by France's
Supreme Court. A few days later he was reinstated in the army, promoted
to squadron chief, or major, and given the Légion d'Honneur.
The Dreyfus Affair, which deeply divided France and called forth a vicious wave of anti-Semitism, was finally over. Or was it?
In
practice, many anti-Dreyfusards — nationalists, army officers, fervent
Catholics and assorted bigots — refused to accept Dreyfus's innocence.
The Catholic daily La Croix lamented "the traitor's reintegration into
the army."
Dreyfus
left the army in 1907, rejoined it during World War I, then led a
fairly uneventful life until his death in 1935. Yet only five years
later, during the German occupation of France, anti-Semitism became
official policy as the collaborationist Vichy government helped to
deport 76,000 Jews, including Dreyfus's granddaughter, to Nazi death
camps.
Continue reading the main story
Now, on the centenary of Dreyfus's acquittal, the affair is again being remembered here.
Fifteen
related books have been published or reissued. The Supreme Court has
held a daylong seminar celebrating its decision of July 12, 1906, to
overrule a military court's scandalous 1899 guilty verdict. And the
Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in Paris is presenting a show,
"Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for Justice."
Yet
while this anniversary once again underlines the lessons of history, it
is also disturbingly topical: in the view of many French Jews,
anti-Semitism is again on the rise here.
This
time it is not a resurgence of the hatred that has long scarred
European history. It is not that of the Middle Ages, the Dreyfus Affair,
World War II or even the cynical minimizing of the Holocaust by the
extreme rightist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1980's. Rather, a new
form of anti-Semitism is now alarming France's 600,000 Jews.
By
all accounts, children of Arab immigrants in France increasingly view
Jews as their enemy. That anti- Semitism has its roots in hostility
toward Israel dating from 1948, but it has been aggravated by the
continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even post-9/11 tensions
between the West and Islam.
At
the same time, some unemployed youths of Arab and African extraction
have made Jews the scapegoats for their anger at French society.
Attacks
on and threats to Jews and Jewish property have been on the rise since
2000, but the most shocking incident was the kidnapping and murder of a
23-year-old French Jew, Ilan Halimi, in February. In what appeared to be
the transfer of ancient prejudices to a new social group, the leader of
the kidnapping gang said Mr. Halimi had been chosen because Jews are
wealthy.
In
a sense, then, today's Dreyfus Affair is the Halimi case, and both
illustrate how easily a civilized society can slide into uncivilized
behavior.
In
1894, when Dreyfus was accused of spying for Germany, France was still
nursing the wounds of its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
It was also alarmed by a newly united Germany's growing might. Discovery
of a letter indicating that French military secrets were being leaked
to Germany set off a wave of paranoia and hysteria.
Dreyfus,
the only Jew in the army high command, was almost immediately held
responsible, although the evidence was flimsy and some army officers
were later proved to have perjured themselves in testifying against him.
A
court-martial sentenced him to imprisonment on Devil's Island, off
French Guiana. Before leaving, he was stripped of his rank — his sword
was symbolically broken — in a ceremony in the École Militaire. "Death
to Jews" became a common cry.
Dreyfus
always insisted on his innocence, and support for him grew among
intellectuals, most famously Émile Zola, who published an open letter to
President Félix Faure in 1898 under the headline "J'Accuse," denouncing
"the abominable Dreyfus Affair." For that, Zola was sentenced to a year
in prison for libeling the army; instead, he went into exile in
Britain.
New
evidence was found incriminating another officer, but he was acquitted
by a court-martial. Dreyfus was nonetheless allowed to return to France
in 1899 to present his case to the Supreme Court. It called for a new
court-martial, and Dreyfus was again found guilty. Such was the outcry
among his supporters that President Émile Loubet pardoned him a few days
later.
But
a good deal of public opinion still considered him guilty. When he
attended Zola's funeral in 1902, he was wounded in an attempted
assassination. Finally, in 1903, a new leftof-center government ordered
the Supreme Court to review the findings of the 1899 court-martial. In
1906, Dreyfus was finally vindicated.
Evidently
it is easier to celebrate the centenary of that triumph of justice than
it was to spotlight earlier anniversaries of less heartening moments in
the affair. In 1994, 100 years after Dreyfus was charged, a French
Army historian cast doubt on Dreyfus's innocence by describing it as
"the thesis" now generally accepted by historians. And in 1999, the
centenary of the second court-martial, no mea culpa was heard from the
army.
One
novelty in the exhibition at the Museum of the Art and History of
Judaism, which continues through Oct. 1, is the show's emphasis on
Dreyfus himself. Often portrayed as an impassive observer of his own
tragedy, he is presented here as a fervent champion of his innocence.
That
is also the thesis of a new biography, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Honor of a
Patriot," by Vincent Duclert, a French historian who organized the
exhibition with Anne Hélène Hoog, a curator at the museum.
Further,
in what seems like a valiant attempt to close the Dreyfus Affair, Mr.
Duclert has now proposed that Dreyfus's remains be laid alongside those
of Zola in the Panthéon, the final resting place of French Republican
heroes. Any decision would have to be made by President Jacques Chirac,
who has reportedly decided instead to preside over a special ceremony at
the École Militaire on the anniversary next Wednesday.
In any event, Jean-Louis Lévy, Dreyfus's grandson, feels the moment is still not ripe to move the remains.
"Many
people visit his tomb in the cemetery of Montparnasse," Mr. Lévy said
in an interview with Tribune de Genève. "It is simple and modest, much
as he was. He's without doubt better off there than in the Panthéon
beside Zola."
Mr. Lévy then offered a more disturbing reason for opposing a move. "I fear it could awaken anti-Semitism," he said.
