Latest news with #AlfredDreyfus
Telegraph
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Macron announces Dreyfus memorial day amid rising anti-Semitism
Emmanuel Macron warned France to beware the 'old demons' of anti-Semitism as he announced a national day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus on Saturday. The president said there would be a memorial ceremony every year on July 12, the date on which the Jewish army captain was exonerated of treason charges for which he had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1894. The first ceremony will take place next year, exactly 120 years after the High Court of Appeal overturned the verdict passed on Dreyfus by a military court in one of the most notorious examples of anti-Semitism in the history of France. Dreyfus, from the Alsace region of eastern France, had been falsely accused of passing information on artillery equipment to Germany. The campaign to free him divided France. 'From now on, every July 12, there will be a commemoration ceremony for Dreyfus, for the victory of justice and truth against hatred and anti-Semitism,' Mr Macron wrote in a communique on Saturday. 'In this way, Alfred Dreyfus and those who fought through him for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity will continue to be the example that must inspire our conduct. 'We know that we must always be vigilant and persistent against these old anti-Semitic demons spawned by hatred. And today more than ever.' France has been experiencing a rising tide of anti-Semitism in recent years, particularly since the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 2023 led to Israel invading Gaza. The announcement of the Dreyfus commemoration follows France's parliament backing a bill last month that promoted Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general in an 'act of reparation' for his wrongful conviction. The officer's conviction amid a virulently anti-Semitic press campaign was based on a comparison of handwriting on a document found in a German military attaché's wastepaper basket. Lt Col Georges Picquart, the head of France's intelligence services, secretly reinvestigated the case, and found the handwriting on the incriminating message was that of another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. But when Picquart presented his evidence to the general staff of the French army, he was kicked out of the military and jailed for a year. Esterhazy was acquitted, which inspired Emile Zola to write his famous 'J'accuse' pamphlet in which the author attacked the 'terrifying judicial error' and 'the hunt for 'dirty Jews' that is soiling our time'. The campaign to free Dreyfus split the country between Dreyfusards, led by Zola, and anti-Dreyfusards such as Maurice Barrès, the far-Right political leader. Dreyfus was brought back to France from the Devil's Island penal colony in French Guiana but was found guilty a second time. He was later pardoned but not cleared of the charges until his final exoneration on July 12 1906. 'Unfortunately, the legacy of the heirs of the anti-Dreyfusards, anti-republicans and anti-Semites of the early and mid-20th century has never died out,' Mr Macron said on Saturday. France is home to the largest Jewish community in Europe, which suffered nearly 1,600 anti-Semitic acts in 2024. The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France said it was a 'historic number'. A total of 504 anti-Semitic acts were recorded in France between January and May 2025, according to the Ministry of the Interior. After the French hard Left made gains in elections last year, Moshe Sebbag, a rabbi for the Synagogue de la Victoire, said he was advising Jews to leave France for Israel. Hard Left reluctant to condemn Hamas 'It seems France has no future for Jews,' he said after a political bloc including Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed won National Assembly elections. France Unbowed is highly critical of Israel and was reluctant to condemn Hamas for the Oct 7 terror attack, which has led to accusations of anti-Semitism. The hard-Right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, has sought to expunge its history of anti-Semitism. Jean-Marie Le Pen, its founder, was a Holocaust denier with numerous convictions for anti-Semitism. In March this year, Jordan Bardella, the party's president, visited Israel for a two-day conference on fighting anti-Semitism in a sign of National Rally's shift.
LeMonde
22-06-2025
- Politics
- LeMonde
'Alfred Dreyfus, a synthesis of the martyr and the just man, deserves to enter the Panthéon'
From 1898 onward, the Dreyfus Affair, which began in 1894, became a major political and judicial scandal. Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer, a Jew and Alsatian who chose France in 1871, was wrongly accused of treason on behalf of Germany. Convicted on the basis of false evidence, he was stripped of his rank and sent to a penal colony. He came to embody the victim of both the state's interests and antisemitism, at a time when the army, the press, the political sphere and society at large were deeply tainted by hatred of Jews. During his years in the penal colony (1895-1899), a massive intellectual and political campaign formed to bring the truth to light, led by his brother Mathieu, the writers Bernard Lazare, Emile Zola and Charles Péguy, and Socialist leader and journalist Jean Jaurès. Dreyfus (1859-1935) became an emblematic figure. For a long time, he was seen as an "uninspiring officer," a passive symbol of innocence, as journalist Philippe Collin recalled in his podcast on the France Inter radio station, Alfred Dreyfus, le combat de la République ("Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for the Republic"). His exoneration in 1906, after his pardon in 1899, restored his honor, but not without an injustice: The government failed to acknowledge his years in the penal colony in his career progression. He resigned but continued to publicly defend the truth of his innocence. He reenlisted from 1914 to 1918. He died in 1935. Faithful to republican principles For a long time, collective memory glorified the Dreyfusards, his supporters, but left Dreyfus himself relegated to the status of mere victim of state conspiracy and antisemitic plotting – especially as, after the traumas of the wars and the Holocaust, heroism gave way to the sacralization of victims. "The victim has become the new figure of the hero," wrote François Azouvi in Du héros à la victime. La métamorphose contemporaine du sacré ("From Hero to Victim: The Contemporary Transformation of the Sacred").
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
We have learnt nothing from the treatment of Alfred Dreyfus
On a winter morning in 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was brought to the Ecole Militaire in Paris. Convicted of treason, he was sentenced to deportation and life imprisonment; his epaulettes were torn off, his sword broken, and he was paraded before a jeering mob of onlookers. Dreyfus was Jewish, and virulent anti-Semitism within the army and wider society was central to his conviction on flimsy evidence. Despite a campaign by his supporters, including the novelist Emile Zola, Dreyfus was convicted a second time. He was not fully exonerated until 1906. At the end of An Officer and a Spy, his 2013 novel about the Dreyfus Affair, Robert Harris added an epilogue in which the newly exonerated Major Dreyfus meets General Picquart, the minister of war, to ask for promotion to lieutenant-colonel – the rank he should have achieved had it not been for his wrongful conviction. Picquart refuses: 'It is politically impossible.' Last week, the lower house of the French parliament unanimously approved a bill put forward by the former prime minister Gabriel Attal to grant Dreyfus retrospective promotion to the rank of brigadier general. Attal made it clear that the gesture was symbolic. 'The anti-Semitism that targeted Alfred Dreyfus is not in the distant past,' the legislation noted. 'Today's acts of hatred remind us that the fight is still ongoing.' But over this belated promotion there hovers the question that attends all symbolic gestures of political regret. Public acts of contrition are not a new phenomenon. In 1174, King Henry II did penance for the murder of Thomas Becket, entering Canterbury barefoot, where he was beaten by the attendant bishops and monks, and spent the night in prayer at Becket's tomb. Such acts might seem theatrical, but they do at least acknowledge that contrition needs to take some tangible form. Words are not enough. This is something that modern politicians struggle to grasp. Their enthusiasm for making grand, frictionless expressions of regret for historical wrongs (the slave trade; the Amritsar massacre) seems to have grown as their appetite for taking responsibility for injustices that have occurred on their own watch (the Post Office and infected-blood scandals, to name just two) has dwindled. Lord Carrington's resignation as foreign secretary in 1982, over Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands, may have been the last recorded example of a politician resigning from a sense of noblesse oblige. Since then, we have become more accustomed to the spectacle of our legislators clinging like bindweed to office, until the glyphosate of public opinion finally withers them. In 2009, the then foreign-office minister Lord Malloch-Brown artlessly admitted that 'British politicians don't know how to say sorry'. But they've upped their game since then, perfecting a virtuoso repertoire of blame-shifting, quasi-apologies ('I'm sorry you feel that way') and rhetorical flourishes that imply change, while retreating into impenetrable thickets of administrative complexity when it comes to reparation. Back in Paris, perhaps Dreyfus's promotion, long after it might have done him any good, may bring some comfort to his descendants. Beyond that, will this gesture deter a single act of anti-Semitic aggression? Or advance in the slightest degree the universal proposition that the systematic tormenting of a particular group of people – in whatever guise it may occur – is profoundly reprehensible. And if not, what on earth is the point? Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We have learnt nothing from the treatment of Alfred Dreyfus
On a winter morning in 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was brought to the Ecole Militaire in Paris. Convicted of treason, he was sentenced to deportation and life imprisonment; his epaulettes were torn off, his sword broken, and he was paraded before a jeering mob of onlookers. Dreyfus was Jewish, and virulent anti-Semitism within the army and wider society was central to his conviction on flimsy evidence. Despite a campaign by his supporters, including the novelist Emile Zola, Dreyfus was convicted a second time. He was not fully exonerated until 1906. At the end of An Officer and a Spy, his 2013 novel about the Dreyfus Affair, Robert Harris added an epilogue in which the newly exonerated Major Dreyfus meets General Picquart, the minister of war, to ask for promotion to lieutenant-colonel – the rank he should have achieved had it not been for his wrongful conviction. Picquart refuses: 'It is politically impossible.' Last week, the lower house of the French parliament unanimously approved a bill put forward by the former prime minister Gabriel Attal to grant Dreyfus retrospective promotion to the rank of brigadier general. Attal made it clear that the gesture was symbolic. 'The anti-Semitism that targeted Alfred Dreyfus is not in the distant past,' the legislation noted. 'Today's acts of hatred remind us that the fight is still ongoing.' But over this belated promotion there hovers the question that attends all symbolic gestures of political regret. Public acts of contrition are not a new phenomenon. In 1174, King Henry II did penance for the murder of Thomas Becket, entering Canterbury barefoot, where he was beaten by the attendant bishops and monks, and spent the night in prayer at Becket's tomb. Such acts might seem theatrical, but they do at least acknowledge that contrition needs to take some tangible form. Words are not enough. This is something that modern politicians struggle to grasp. Their enthusiasm for making grand, frictionless expressions of regret for historical wrongs (the slave trade; the Amritsar massacre) seems to have grown as their appetite for taking responsibility for injustices that have occurred on their own watch (the Post Office and infected-blood scandals, to name just two) has dwindled. Lord Carrington's resignation as foreign secretary in 1982, over Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands, may have been the last recorded example of a politician resigning from a sense of noblesse oblige. Since then, we have become more accustomed to the spectacle of our legislators clinging like bindweed to office, until the glyphosate of public opinion finally withers them. In 2009, the then foreign-office minister Lord Malloch-Brown artlessly admitted that 'British politicians don't know how to say sorry'. But they've upped their game since then, perfecting a virtuoso repertoire of blame-shifting, quasi-apologies ('I'm sorry you feel that way') and rhetorical flourishes that imply change, while retreating into impenetrable thickets of administrative complexity when it comes to reparation. Back in Paris, perhaps Dreyfus's promotion, long after it might have done him any good, may bring some comfort to his descendants. Beyond that, will this gesture deter a single act of anti-Semitic aggression? Or advance in the slightest degree the universal proposition that the systematic tormenting of a particular group of people – in whatever guise it may occur – is profoundly reprehensible. And if not, what on earth is the point?
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Stymied French politicians turn to the sins of the past
On Thursday, two years after France's controversial retirement age increase, the National Assembly voted to withdraw the reform. While the news was politically explosive because the far-right National Rally helped the left-wing opposition gain a majority in the vote, the decision hasn't yielded any actual legal results. The situation reflects the country's ongoing failure to address structural reforms since the parliamentary elections last summer, which left the government won without an absolute majority. But in the area of remembrance policy there has been significant movement. In the same week as the toothless retirement resolution, parliamentarians adopted three texts that reclassify historical events or offer the prospect of reparations. On June 2, the French parliament voted unanimously to posthumously appoint Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general. The Jewish officer was wrongly accused of high treason in 1894, based on falsified evidence that he revealed military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Dreyfus subsequently spent four years in the notorious Devil's Island penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. The Franco-German dimension of the case had explosive foreign policy implications even then. The suspect's Jewish origins and his family background in the Alsace-Lorraine region, which came under German rule after the Franco-Prussian War, and strained relations with Germany, made him an ideal target for the nationalist mistrust many French people harbored at the time. Writer Émile Zola famously sided with Dreyfus in his essay "J'accuse…!", which played a critical role in the officer's exoneration and military rehabilitation in 1906. Nevertheless, after serving in the First World War as a lieutenant colonel, Dreyfus was only reinstated at a lower rank. This posthumous promotion for Dreyfus still has to pass the Senate. Alsatian MP Charles Sitzenstuhl, a member of French President Emmanuel Macron's center-right Renaissance Party, who introduced the initiative, offered a link to the present as a warning: "The anti-Semitism that plagued Alfred Dreyfus is not a thing of the distant past," he said. Just one day after the Dreyfus vote, the National Assembly also passed a law to recognize and compensate former returnees from French Indochina after the colonial rule of territories including Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia ended in 1954. Around 44,000 people were repatriated to France, among them colonial officials, soldiers and their families, the descendants of French colonizers and local women, as well as local collaborators. Between 4,000 to 6,000 returnees ended up in temporary camps, which were often outfitted with wooden barracks that lacked heating and plumbing. Returnees were also subject to degrading policies that included bans on going out and owning cars or other luxury goods. The new law introduced by the left-wing Socialist Party now provides for financial support based on someone's length of stay in the camps. It is estimated that up to 1,600 people could claim compensation. On June 5, the Assembly adopted a resolution addressing a "double debt" to Haiti that goes back to 1825. That was the year that France forced Haiti, which had declared independence in 1804, to pay compensation of 150 million gold francs. This was intended as a recognition of independence that would also compensate for the loss of French colonial possessions, including income from slaves. Haiti was forced to settle this "independence debt" over decades — a considerable economic burden that contributed to long-term poverty and instability on the island. The resolution, initiated by the Communist Party, calls for recognition, repayment and reparations for Haiti. But the text does not include concrete political steps or financial agreements. Nevertheless, the far-right National Rally voted against it. Remembrance politics have some tradition in France. In 2001, the "Taubira" law, named after the parliamentarian who introduced it, recognized the slave trade and practice of slavery as crimes against humanity. The topic has been a part of school curricula in France ever since. In October 2006, the National Assembly passed a bill to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire with a year in prison or fine of €45,000 ($51,300). The bill never came into force after it failed to pass in the Senate, and was followed by a similarly doomed initiative introduced under President Nicolas Sarkozy. That draft law passed both chambers of parliament, but was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council in February 2012, which said that it amounted to unlawful interference with freedom of expression and research. Another example is the treatment of the so-called "Senegalese riflemen," the colonial soldiers from Africa who fought for France in the two world wars. For decades, many received significantly lower pensions than their French comrades, especially if they lived outside of France after decolonization. It was not until 2009 that President Sarkozy decreed an equalization of pension benefits, a step that held great symbolic significance. The latest spike in such initiatives has been met with mixed interpretations by political scientists. Some experts see the willingness to take historical responsibility as a form of social maturity. But others point out that in a politically paralyzed legislature, symbolic initiatives are easier to pass than structural reforms in areas such as pensions, education or the budget. This article was originally written in German.
