Dreyfus Was Vindicated, but What of the French?

One hundred years ago this month, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer who had spent five years on Devil's Island for high treason and an additional seven years trying to clear his name, was absolved by France's Supreme Court. A few days later he was reinstated in the army, promoted to squadron chief, or major, and given the Légion d'Honneur.

The Dreyfus Affair, which deeply divided France and called forth a vicious wave of anti-Semitism, was finally over. Or was it?

In practice, many anti-Dreyfusards — nationalists, army officers, fervent Catholics and assorted bigots — refused to accept Dreyfus's innocence. The Catholic daily La Croix lamented "the traitor's reintegration into the army."

Dreyfus left the army in 1907, rejoined it during World War I, then led a fairly uneventful life until his death in 1935. Yet only five years later, during the German occupation of France, anti-Semitism became official policy as the collaborationist Vichy government helped to deport 76,000 Jews, including Dreyfus's granddaughter, to Nazi death camps.

Now, on the centenary of Dreyfus's acquittal, the affair is again being remembered here.