sons of Israel among the vast
majority of the military."
Alfred Dreyfus was 35 years
old when he was arrested in Oc-
tober 1894, one month after the
French intelligence service,
then called the "Statistical Sec-
tion," intercepted an anony-
mous note to the German mil-
itary attache, Colonel
Maximilian von Schwartzkop-
pen, informing him that confi-
dential military documents
were on their way to him.
The note, which became
known as the "bordereau," was
unsigned, but its tone implied
a longstanding relationship be-
tween the writer and the diplo-
mat. The documents to which
it referred have never been
found.
Suspicion quickly fell on
Dreyfus, a talented artillery of-
ficer who had been targeted for
higher office and was in the
process of spending time in each
department of the French War
Office, the first Jew ever to have
been posted to the War Office.
There was no evidence to link
Dreyfus to the "bordereau" or to
the German diplomat, but
Dreyfus, a new recruit to the
heart of the French military es-
tablishment, was an easy tar-
get: He was widely unpopular
among his colleagues, who con-
sidered him to be too arrogant,
too ambitious, not one of the
boys.
"But most of all," wrote his-
torian Keith Randall, "he was
suspect because he was a Jew."
When the army found hand-
writing experts prepared to tes-
tify that the "bordereau" was
written by Dreyfus, his fate was
sealed and, with no stronger ev-
idence, he was arraigned before

The Dreyfus case
prompted Theodore
Herzl to begin
agitating for a
Jewish state.

the Senior Paris Court Martial
on December 19, 1894.
Dreyfus protested his inno-
cence, but after a three-day tri-
al behind closed doors he was
convicted of treason and sen-
tenced to life imprisonment on
Devil's Island, an ordeal that
was preceded by formal cashier-
ing from the army before fellow
officers, a humiliating ceremo-
ny in which his rank and but-
tons were ripped off his uniform
and his sword was broken.
The Dreyfus family cam-
paigned vigorously for a retrial
and, despite the fevered anti-
Semitic climate, so too did
Emile Zola, the eminent French
politician Georges Clemenceau
and, most surprisingly, the new

head of French intelligence,
Colonel Georges Picquart.
To the fury of his military su-
periors, Picquart told them he
had not only found documents
indicating Dreyfus was inno-
cent, but he had also discovered
that, even with Dreyfus incar-
cerated, the flow of documents
from the War Office to the Ger-
man Embassy was continuing
unchecked.
Moreover, the embassy trash
cans yielded a partly written let-
ter to Major Eugene Esterhazy,
a former fellow officer of Drey-
fus, which indicated that Es-
terhazy was in fact the traf-
ficker in French military
secrets. And when Picquart
compared Esterhazy's hand-
writing with that in the "bor-
dereau," it matched precisely.
On January 13, 1898, two
days after Esterhazy was tried
and, astonishingly, acquitted,
Emile Zola published a front-
page letter to the president of
France in the French daily
"L'Aurore" lambasting the
army, the judiciary, and accus-
ing the Esterhazy court of
"knowingly acquitting a guilty
man." It was an accusation for
which he would be sentenced to
one year in jail.
Under growing pressure and
facing deepening public divi-
sions on the issue, the army de-
cided to set aside the verdict
handed in 1894 and ordered
that Dreyfus should appear be-
fore a new court martial in
Rennes. Despite the fact that
the original evidence against
Dreyfus was shown to be a
forgery — and the fact that the
forger had committed suicide —
Dreyfus was again convicted
and ordered to be returned to
Devil's Island.
Now, however, the state in-
tervened: On September 19,
1899, Dreyfus was pardoned
and released by the president.
On June 2, 1900, the French
Senate granted him an am-
nesty, and soon after the French
Supreme Court set aside the
verdict and cleared Dreyfus of
any blame. It was not until July
1906, however, that the army
quashed the verdict of the ear-
lier courts martial and read-
mitted Dreyfus to its ranks.
The Dreyfus Affair had pro-
duced a significant backlash
against anti-Semitism and it
had provided the catalyst for
Herzl's drive for a modern Zion-
ist state. Ironically, however,
Dreyfus never identified as a
Jew or a supporter of the Zion-
ist cause.
He was awarded the Legion
of Honor and returned to the
army, where he was promoted
to the rank of colonel. Alongside
his son, he fought for France in
World War I, commanding a
fort that defended Paris, and
died peacefully in 1935. LI

by COLONY
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626-1999
•
W. Bloomfield

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COMIC OW!
COMO

Aee!

To Beth Shalom's
Purim Carnival

Sunday, February 27, 1994
12:00 noon - 2:30 p.m.

Fun • Games • And More

Hot Dogs and Hamantashen
Lunch $3.50 Tickets 250

Call Faith at 541-5437 for more information.

Kadima and USY youth groups are also invited
to help set up for the Purim Carnival on Saturday,
February 26, from 8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Congregation Beth Shalom • 14601 Lincoln Road • Oak Park • 547-7970

Next time you feed your face, think about your hest

Go easy on your heart and start cutting back on foods that are high in saturated
fat and cholesterol. The change'll do you good.
WERE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
I, American Heart Association

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125