The Dreyfus Affair: Grievous Antisemitic Miscarriage of Justice In France

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The Dreyfus Affair: Grievous Antisemitic…

DREYFUS

Note: We’re rerunning our previous posting about the Dreyfus Affair. To learn why, be sure to read the COMMENTARY below.

In December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus — a 35-year-old French artillery officer — was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. Dreyfus, who eventually was proved to be innocent, spent nearly five years in the notorious Devil’s Island prison in French Guiana. It was a case of blatant antisemitism that sent shockwaves through the Jewish world and the Third French Republic.

Quote: “World Jewry was stunned that such an affair could occur in France, the cradle of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The fact that the public, including nobles and members of the clergy, saw Dreyfus — an assimilated Jew — as an outsider seemed to suggest that assimilation was no longer a defense against anti-Semitism.”

Sources: Wikipedia, My Jewish Learning

Learn more about the Dreyfus Affair on Wikipedia. >>

Watch “The Dreyfus Affair and Anti-Semitism: AP Euro Bit by Bit” [4:16]. >>

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Notable &
Quotable

“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.