Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945

"The Dreyfus affair is a mythic event in French history. After the French Revolution, it created the most important social division in France before 1905, when the country was split in two over the separation of church and state and the secularisation of education. It divided France entirely and created unresolved conflicts in society that were fought out over the century to come. This is very rough and over-generalised but Republican France was always under attack in one form or another from those who never accepted the Republic, and the Dreyfus case is an exemplar of that. Alfred Dreyfus, Jewish and a colonel in the French army, was wrongly accused and convicted of espionage. He served four horrific years on Devil’s Island and all this time people all over France, and indeed, the world, were fighting for justice for him. Ultimately, Dreyfus was pardoned and the army was found guilty of fabricating the evidence against him, but it took years and years of oceanic battles. This book is the first to tell the story of the entire Dreyfus family – taking them from their origins in Alsace to the Nazi death camps where some of Dreyfus’s descendants were murdered – sent there by the Vichy government. It’s a wonderful historical narrative which tells you all the background you need to know about the family before coming to your own conclusions – everyone comes to their own conclusions about the Dreyfus case. It’s the story of a remarkable family who suffered greatly at the hands of the French state but who also maintained absolute allegiance to it. They are the best example of what the French Revolution did for French Jews, which was to give them equal status – this, of course, did not happen throughout the rest of Europe until decades later. The family is quietly heroic and what is interesting is the number of French Republicans, thinkers, philosophers, intellectuals, who came out to defend them."