Notorious 'Dreyfus Affair' Related by Lewis, Sheds Light on World Opinion, Jewish Reactions
gathering facts, enrolling sup-
porters, winning aid to free
his brother and to restore
him to his rightful rank in
the army Alfred loved and to
which he was deeply at-
tached.
Dreyfus was, in fact, so
deeply attached to the French
army that the view is re-
iterated that Dreyfus himself
would have been an anti-
Dreyfusard had he not been
the Dreyfus involved in this
case.
Picquart did not end on
the best of terms with the
Dreyfuses. When amnesty
Few incidents in modern plete capture of the spirit of
was proposed in France, Pic-
history have left their impact the time of its occurrence
quart opposed it because it
on succeeding generations as and reactions of the person-
would free from prosecution
much as the Dreyfus Affair; alities involved.
those still involved in the his-
few have involved so many
It is because Dr. Lewis
toric crime for which he had
and have been brought as had direct contacts with
made so many sacrifices.
dramatically to international members of the Dreyfus fam-
That's when, Lewis writes,
public attention.
ily that he was able to study
"the Dreyfusards were ex-
Every new work on the manuscripts in the family's
asperated with the Drey-
subject therefore inevitably possessions and to supple-
fuses." Lewis states: " 'Your
revives interest in the case. ment his study with impres-
brother has remained silent
sions
of
family
reactions
to
This is true of the excellent
for a year,' (Fernand) Labori
new work "Prisoners of the French officer's suffer-
(the courageous lawyer who
Honor: The Dreyfus Affair," ings and his determined will
defended Dreyfus) scolded
under
most
trying
conditions
by Prof. David L. Lewis,
Mathieu. 'You only concern
published by William Morrow to survive the terrors on
yourself with your brother's
Devil's Island, _on which he
and Co.
skin. You're forgetting your
While Lewis' reconstruction was kept prisoner for more
friends.' Labori insisted that
than
four
years,
to
prove
his
of the Dreyfus tragedy, step-
the Dreyfuses owed Picquart
by-step, as the many in- innocence.
the loyalty of denouncing the
trigues and falsifications de-
The pluralized title of the
amnesty. and of even publicly
veloped, do not add too much book—"Prisoners of Honor"
reproving the prime minister.
new material, the author, a — is appropriate. Captain Al-
They narrowly missed corn-
French scholar, gains recog- fred Dreyfus was not the only
ing to blows and Mathieu left
nition for his work because prisoner. His chief defender,
the attorney's office vowing,
it traces the involvements Col. Georges Picquart, who
`Everything is over between
that affected relations be- was consistent in seeking
us.' " Indeed, communication
tween the several European truth and exposing the forg-
between "the rigid Dreyfus
countries and provides the eries which condemned Drey-
and the regal Picquart"
data valuable for an appreci- fus and the lies perpetrated
never improved.
ation of the concerns in Drey- during the trials, also was a
Lewis' story has the added
fus' fate in England and the prisoner: He was expelled
interest of relating the inter-
United States. The entire from the army, was impris-
est shown by Jews in Drey-
world was immersed in the oned, nevertheless was not
fus' plight. Grand Rabbi Za-
battle between the Dreyfus- deterred from his adherence
doe Kahn was noble and
ards and the anti-Dreyfus- to a deep conscience, even
helpful. He comforted and
though he did not like Drey-
ards.
aided the Dreyfuses. Bernard
Even for this reviewer, fus and was not a lover of
Lazare, the Jewish journalist,
who has read much of the Jews. Also, Emil Zola, whose
was among the most helpful.
published material on the "J'Accuse" in Georges
Joseph Reinach joined the
subject — the first book he Clemenceau's L'Aurore (Jan.
forces for justice, and was a
read on the Dreyfus case 13, 1898) did more than any-
chief factor among the Drey-
was in Russian, as a young- thing else to force public
fusards. Baron Edmond de
ster, and possessing it was attention to Dreyfus' inno-
Rothschild, unknowingly no
the envy of his community— cence, also was a prisoner—
doubt, had helped finance the
there was added fascination in exile in England where he
traitor, Charles Marie Febr
in Prof. Lewis' work because fled when he was condemned
dinand Walsin-Esterhazy. The
of its conciseness yet corn- by a Paris court for his
most frightened Jew was the
writer Arthur Meyer who is
described as "the anti-Semitic
Semite."
Lewis took into account the
presence at the Dreyfus trial
of Theodor Herzl and the
emergence of the political
Zionist movement. He de-
scribes the reactions to the
movement, Joseph Reinach
as having viewed it as a
"supreme nightmare," Ber-
nard Lazare having admitted
that "Assimilation is not and
cannot be a solution."
A fact mentioned by Lewis,
not to be ignored in dealing
with Affaire Dreyfus, is that
the Vatican was silent during
the procedures.
*
*
Lewis' account of the no-
torious case should be read
together with "the documen-
tary history' of the case, as
presented by Prof. Louis L.
Snyder in his "The Dreyfus
Case," published by Rutgers
University Press. It was re-
viewed in The Jewish News,
Aug. 10, 1973.
Snyder's contains many val-
uable records which assist
in comprehensive historicity
of the occurrences.
*
In a sense, the Lewis book
also is a commentary on anti-
Semitism as well as a pane-
On the jacket of David L. Lewis' "Prisoners of Honor" is this picture of the degra- gyric to courage. The French
dation of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Photographs were not permitted of that scene, but this scholar gives a full account
of what had happened to the
contemporary drawing was ascertained as accurately describing the tragic scene.
entire cast in this drama:
the death of Zola from gas
48 Friday, February 8, 1974
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
"On Aug. 19, 1899, The General Advertiser of New
South Wales, Australia, observed, 'When the Dreyfus
Case is ended, and nobody on this earth knows when
that will be, here will be a relief to. mankind all the
world over.' Although the role of the principal victim—
is over, the Dreyfus Affair continues,
Dreyfus' part
for the affair is about old-fashioned fundamentals.
Wherever and whenever dissension about social har-
mony, political. expediency, and national defense ob-
scures the rivlits of minorities, the corruption of insti-
tutions and the aberrations of patriotism, there is a
Dreyfus Affair. In the plainest terms, where and when
people consciously acquiesce in denial of justice to a
single person, 'relief to mankind all the world over'
recedes." — From Preface to "Prisoners of Honor: The
Dreyfus Affair," by David L. Lewis.
—
—
authorship of the historic
article. Morally, all the char-
acters in this story are pris-
oners of honor. It is not
prison alone that is the test
of the thus-honored.
The new history of the
Dreyfus case provides a
thorough sketch of Charles
Walsin-Esterhazy, the author
of the bordereaux which was
produced as a forgery by the
anti-Semitic army officers.
Because the army and the
politicians who were induced
to labor with the officers who
concocted the entire con-
spiracy in their aim to save
the honor of the army — in
spite of false accusations and
the persecutions of an inno-
cent officer — the outraged
persisted. It was not until a
change in government, an ex-
pose of the Catholic propa-
ganda to condemn a Jew and
the insistent efforts of Pic-
quart, Zola, Clemenceau, the
courageous non-Jewish Vice
President Scheurer - Kestner
and a number of others who
would not sacrifice truth,
that Dreyfus was finally ex-
onerated and he and Picquart
were restored to their right-
ful ranks in the army.
When Dreyfus finally was
exonerated, it is interesting
to read in Lewis' account that
the entire world acclaimed
the triumph of justice. Only
the French Canadians and the
anti-Semitic Russian Novoye
Vriemya condemned the
French government and kept
calling Dreyfus a traitor.
It was in the process of
exposing the army lie that
Major Hubert Joseph Henry
was exposed, that his forging
of documents became known
and his suicide led to point-
ing to the true guilt among
army officers.
Captain Dreyfus' brother
Mathieu and Dreyfus' wife
Lucie Hadamard Dreyfus are
among the real heores in this
drama. Both stood fast in
the struggle for truth. Lucie
kept giving her husband
courage in her letters to him
while he was suffering under
atrocious conditions on Dev-
il's Island. Mathieu kept
Captain Alfred Drefyus
in 1900
fumes (the hint it may have
been murder by his enemies
who capped the chimney of
his home); and all members
of the army staff and the
Dreyfus family. There is this
personal note with which the
Lewis story concludes:
"The anti-Semitism which
was both cause and conse-
quence of the affair had
found ultimate and terrible
expression in Germany Na-
tional Socialism and in the
Fascism of Marshal Philippe
Petain's Etat Francais.
"In the summer of 1940
Lucie moved with her family
to Montpellier in the South of
France, in the zone unoccu-
pied by the conquering Ger-
mans. There they remained
even after November 1942
when the Wehrmacht invaded
Vichy territory. As French
Jews, they were relatively
secure as long as they minded
their politics. But Lucie's
granddaughter, Madeleine
Levy, joined the Resistance.
She died in Auschwitz shortly
before the camp was liber-
ated. Lucie died on Decem-
ber 14, 1945, nearly a year
and a half after the liberation
of Paris.
For a \time there was
street in Mulhouse named
after Alfred Dreyfus — the
only public monument in all
France — but not so long
ago this street was widened
and renamed. While riding in
a taxi with the daughter of
Mathieu Dreyfus, the writer
began to ask about the street
in Mulhouse. 'Shush, Mon-
sieur,' she interrupted,
`please speak English—the
driver, you know.' "
Coupling the opening para-
graph from the preface to
"Prisoners of Honor" (with
which the review com-
mences), is like an admoni-
tion from Prof. Lewis that
what had happened can hap-
pen again; that the curse of
anti-Semitism has not been
erased; that even the most
assimilated — and the Drey-
fuses certainly were and are
among the most French in
their assimilation — can not
escape that curse. "Prisoners
of Honor" has its historic
values and is replete with
lessons for those studying
Jewish experiences in a mod-
ern sphere that could well be
poisoned — as it constantly is
— by bigots.
—P.S.
Educational Opportunities Rife
in 40-Year-Old Youth Aliya Net
Youth Aliya, which this
year celebrates its 40th anni-
versary, has educated more
than 150,000 children and
adolescents from 70 coun-
tries.
Dr. Yaacov Gal-Or, U.S.
director of Youth Aliya, said
that one out of 20 Israeli cit-
izens is a Youth Aliya grad-
uate. Among them are scien-
tists, university lecturers,
musicians and educators.
Youth Aliya has had to de-
v e l o p various educational
frameworks and dynamic
policies to meet the ever-
changing needs of the chil-
dren who immigrate to Is-
rael.
Its programs provide an
opportunity for substantial
education in a country where
"Jewish ideals and aspira-
tions have been translated
into reality," Dr. Gal-Or
said.
Families preparing for
aliya r. - ay not have set a date
for th*departure or may
find th's,f4__
;-,..it falls after the
beginning of the Israeli
school year. In such cases,
parents may decide that the
children should precede them
to Israel so as not to risk
losing a year of school.
Placement in a youth vil-
lage is the most common ab-
sorption technique of Youth
Aliya. There, the pressure
upon the newcomer child to
change is not massive, since
he is with other immigrant
children who can try out new
patterns of behavior at their
own pace.
The fact that the new im-
migrant children live togeth-
er with Israelis provides
them opportunity to commu-
nicate and grasp the lan-
guage faster than if they had
been placed in regular
schools.
In trying to suit the curri-
culum of the secondary
school to children coming
from different countries and
cultures, Youth Aliya has es-
tablished special classes for
French, Spanish, Romanian,
Persian, Russian and Eng-
lish-speaking children.
An example of this pro-
gram is the English-Lan-
guage High School of Sde
Boker, a branch of a large
educational complex ca
the Midrasha which cont,
a teachers' college, an Israeli
high school and a school of
environmental studies.
The Youth Aliya ulpanim
(Hebrew language centers),
located in various youth vil-
lages and kibutzim, have de-
veloped a dual-purpose pro-
gram. The first stage of 6-8
months is devoted to the
study of Hebrew. Then the
students are directed to vo-
cational or academic courses
in accordance with their
scholastic achievements.
The Youth Aliya network
in Israel consists of over 250
schools and youth villages.
Americans are accepted in
almost all of them. Informa-
tion is available from Youth
Aliya, 515 Park, New York
10022.