Paris – France’s president on Wednesday urged continued vigilance against racism and intolerance as he marked the 100th anniversary of the “rehabilitation” of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain whose trumped-up treason conviction came to symbolize French anti-Semitism.
On July 12, 1906, a top French court “rehabilitated” Dreyfus, meaning his name was formally cleared, paving the way for his return to the army.
The decision was reached after a protracted legal process involving several minor cases that also sought to sully his name.
He returned to the army and was awarded the Legion of Honor, one of France’s most prestigious distinctions.
“The combat against the dark forces of intolerance and hate is never definitively won,” said President Jacques Chirac, who presided at the ceremony in the cobblestone courtyard of Paris’ Ecole Militaire, where Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and then rehabilitated 11 years later.
“We must remain vigilant,” Chirac warned in a speech broadcast live on French television.
Relatives of Dreyfus attended the ceremony, along with relatives of writer Émile Zola, who campaigned on the besmirched officer’s behalf. A bevy of ministers, historians and Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders also were present.
Chirac called Dreyfus, who served more than four years on Devil’s Island off French Guiana before being cleared, “an exemplary officer” and a “patriot who passionately loved France.”
The Dreyfus Affair, as it is still known, “helped to strengthen the republic,” Chirac said. Even 100 years later, the affair speaks to modern-day France, which is still coming to terms with the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II and subjected to scattered anti-Semitic acts.
The Dreyfus Affair was a case of espionage that ended by shaking France to the core, revealing a hidden layer of anti-Semitism.
It began in September 1894 with a letter intercepted by French army intelligence intended for the German military attaché in Paris. Within weeks, Dreyfus was suspected as the letter’s author.
In a swiftly moving sequence of events, Dreyfus was arrested Oct. 15, 1894, convicted by the War Council on Dec. 22, publicly stripped of his rank on Jan. 5, 1895, and on April 13, sent to a prisoner’s worst fate, Devil’s Island off the northern coast of South America.
New evidence that surfaced a year later convinced some authorities that Dreyfus was innocent.
By November 1897, Zola made Dreyfus his cause célèbre. But it was only in June 1899 that the conviction was annulled.
Dreyfus returned to France the following month.
