European Jewish Congress Welcomes French Promotion Of Persecuted Officer

By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

PARIS/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has welcomed “the unanimous decision” by French legislators to posthumously promote a captain to the rank of brigadier general, 130 years after his wrongful conviction in “one of the most infamous antisemitic scandals in modern European history.”

The French parliament on Monday, June 2, backed a bill that would promote Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain who was wrongly found guilty of treason in 1894 amid hatred toward Jews

The lower house, Assemblée Nationale, unanimously approved the legislation as an act of reparation and a symbolic step in the fight against antisemitism in modern France.

“This symbolic act is a meaningful gesture of historical justice. It honours the memory of a man whose loyalty to the French Republic never wavered, even as he became a target of hatred and falsehood,” said the ECJ, which claims to represent 42 national Jewish communities and 2.5 million Jews across Europe.

“The Dreyfus Affair not only exposed the dangers of antisemitism and institutional bias, but also helped awaken public conscience in defence of truth and justice,” the group added.

Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who leads President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, proposed the draft law.

DEPUTIES IN FAVOR

Observers said the promotion still needs to be approved by the upper house, Sénat, at a date that has yet to be fixed before it takes effect.

All 197 deputies present voted in favor in the Assemblée. The rapporteur of the proposed law, Renaissance lawmaker Charles Sitzenstuhl, said the vote “will go down in history” and called on senators “to adopt the text quickly.”

Dreyfus’s condemnation came amid rampant antisemitism in the French army and broader society in the late 19th century, legislators recalled, at a time of renewed growing alarm over hate crimes against Jews in the country.

France has Europe’s biggest Jewish community and the world’s third-largest after Israel and the United States.

“Promoting Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general would constitute an act of reparation, a recognition of his merits, and a tribute to his commitment to the Republic,” said Attal, who was France’s youngest prime minister during a spell in office that lasted less than eight months last year.

“The anti-Semitism that hit Alfred Dreyfus is not a thing of the past,” stressed Attal, whose father was Jewish, adding that France must reaffirm its “absolute commitment against all forms of discrimination.”

SECRET INFORMATION

Dreyfus, a 36-year-old army captain from the Alsace region of eastern France, was accused in October 1894 of passing secret information on new artillery equipment to a German military attaché.

The accusation was based on comparing handwriting on a document found in the Germans’ wastepaper basket in Paris.

Dreyfus was put on trial amid a virulent anti-Semitic press campaign. But novelist Emile Zola then penned his famous “J’accuse” (“I accuse…”) pamphlet in support of the captain.

Despite a lack of evidence, Dreyfus was convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana, and publicly stripped of his rank.

But Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, head of the intelligence services, reportedly reinvestigated the case secretly and found that the handwriting on the incriminating message was of another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

When Picquart presented the evidence to the French army’s general staff, he was driven out of the military and jailed for a year. At the same time, Esterhazy was acquitted, according to historical records.

SECOND TRIAL

In June 1899, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial. He was initially found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison before being officially pardoned, though he was not cleared of the charges.

Only in 1906, after lengthy legal wrangling, did the High Court of Appeal overturn the original verdict, exonerating Dreyfus. He was reinstated with the rank of major, served during World War I, and died in 1935, aged 76.

French media reported that the bill’s backers believe that had Dreyfus been able to pursue his career under normal circumstances, he would have risen to the top of the French army.

Sitzenstuhl has also suggested that Dreyfus could be entombed in the Panthéon, the Paris mausoleum reserved for France’s “greatest heroes.” Such a decision rests with President Macron.

There has been a rise in reported attacks against members of France’s Jewish community since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli military responded with a devastating military offensive on the Gaza Strip.

France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues, and a restaurant were vandalized with paint overnight at the weekend, in what the Israeli embassy denounced as a “coordinated antisemitic attack.”

The ECJ said that “At a time when antisemitism is once again rising across Europe, this recognition [of Dreyfus] sends a powerful message: that democracies must confront past injustices with clarity and integrity, and that no society is immune to the corrosive effects of prejudice.”

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