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.