Alfred Dreyfus Document Trove Is Posted Online by French Defense Ministry
Moral Strength: French Jew Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason, but later exonerated. Image by getty images
France’s Defense Ministry has posted online hundreds of documents from the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish soldier whose wrongful espionage conviction was a determinant in the genesis of political Zionism.
The historical department of the French Ministry of Defense, SHD, placed online this week the entire military file that was used to convict Dreyfus of spying for Germany in 1894. The documents include items like investigative notes, witness statements, letters and documents stolen from foreign embassies.
Among the dozens of foreign correspondents covering the Dreyfus trial, which featured strong themes of anti-Semitism, was Theodor Herzl, who was then a reporter for the Vienna New Free Press. Two years after founding the Zionist Organization, now called the World Zionist Organization, Herzl wrote in 1899 that the Dreyfus case was what made him a Zionist.
Dreyfus was pardoned and restored to the army as a major after a lengthy court battle and nearly five years of solitary confinement on Devil’s Island, the notorious penal colony in French Guiana; he had been sentenced to life in prison.
The case was widely denounced as a miscarriage of justice, most notably in “J’accuse,” an open letter by Émile Zola published on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore in 1898.
The archived files from the trial have been scanned, transcribed and made accessible to the general public online with the help of the authors of a new book about the trial titled “Le dossier secret de l’affaire Dreyfus.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
