A group of French lawmakers said, on Tuesday, May 6, that they wanted Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain who was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, to be awarded the rank of brigadier general, more than a century after the Dreyfus affair divided French society and gave rise to writer Emile Zola's famous J'accuse pamphlet, written in favor of the disgraced captain.
The parliamentarians, led by former prime minister Gabriel Attal, said a law to that effect would be an act of reparation for Dreyfus, whose condemnation came against the backdrop of the late 19th century's rampant anti-Semitism in the French army and wider society. Attal said that, without the years in exile and his public humiliation, Dreyfus "would have risen to the highest ranks naturally." No date has been set yet for a vote on the proposal.
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 the German military attaché. The accusation was based on a comparison of Dreyfus' handwriting with a document found in the German's waste paper basket in Paris. Dreyfus was put on trial amid a virulent anti-Semitic press campaign. Despite a lack of evidence, he 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.
However, Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, head of the French intelligence services, reinvestigated the case in secret and discovered the handwriting on the incriminating message was that of another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. When Picquart presented the evidence to the general staff of the French army, he was also driven out of the military and jailed for a year, while Esterhazy was acquitted.
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 not cleared of the charges. Only in 1906, after many twists, did the country's highest appeals court overturn the original verdict, exonerating Dreyfus. He was reinstated with the rank of major. He served during World War I and died in 1935, aged 76.
It would, said Attal, also send the signal that the fight against anti-Semitism continues today. "The anti-Semitism that targeted Alfred Dreyfus is not in the distant past," Attal said, in a draft law to be submitted to parliament. "Today's acts of hatred remind us that the fight is still ongoing."
France is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States, as well as the largest Muslim community in the European Union. 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.