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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: July 12, 2006 |
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France on Wednesday marked the 100th anniversary of the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish army officer unjustly convicted of treason in an affair that has left an indelible mark on the nation.
President Jacques Chirac was to preside over the national ceremony in the cobblestone courtyard of the Ecole Militaire, the military school where Dreyfus was rehabilitated 11 years after being stripped of his rank and sent to Devil's Island off French Guiana.
Relatives of Dreyfus were expected to attend the ceremony, along with relatives of writer Emile Zola, who campaigned on Dreyfus' behalf. A bevy of ministers, historians and Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders also were to be present.
At the ceremony, Chirac planned to pay homage "to the man, to the soldier" and "to the patriot victim of a frightening judicial error," officials in the president's office said last week.
The Dreyfus Affair, as it is known, continues to speak to modern-day France, which is still coming to terms with the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II and still subjected to anti-Semitic acts today.
But for some, the national ceremony steeped in pomp falls short. Chirac formally rejected a bid to have the remains of Dreyfus -- interred at the Montparnasse Cemetery -- transferred to the monument of French heroes, the Pantheon, beside those of Zola. A statue of Dreyfus created in the mid-1990s never found its intended place at Ecole Militaire and stands elsewhere in Paris.
The Dreyfus Affair was a simple case of espionage, but one that ended by shaking France to the core, revealing a hidden layer of anti-Semitism and spurring its growth.
It began in September 1894 with a letter intercepted by French Army intelligence intended for the German military attache in Paris. Within weeks, Dreyfus was the suspected author of the letter.
In a swiftly moving sequence of events, Dreyfus was arrested Oct. 15, 1894, convicted by the War Council on Dec. 22, publicly stripped of his rank on Jan. 5, 1895 and sent to a prisoner's worst fate, Devil's Island, on April 13.
New evidence that surfaced a year later convinced some authorities that Dreyfus was innocent. By November 1997, Zola made Dreyfus his cause celebre. But it was only in June 1899 that the conviction was annulled. Dreyfus returned to France the following month and was formally pardoned.
It took 10 more months for Dreyfus to be fully rehabilitated, on July 12, 1906. He returned to the army and was awarded the Legion of Honor, one of France's most prestigious distinctions. |
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