Why did the Alfred Dreyfus affair capture the world's attention?

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This is Late Night Live. I'm David Marr and we are coming to you from Gadigal land.

Over a century ago, a Jewish officer in the French army was wrongly convicted of treason

and sent to Devil's Island. The campaign to exonerate Alfred Dreyfus gripped the world

and fascination with the case and the anti-Semitism that drove it has never died. It's said more books

have been written about the Dreyfus affair than any other event in the French history

except the revolution.

But one more I'm very glad to say has rolled off the presses. It's called Alfred Dreyfus,

The Man at the Center of the Affair. And I'm joined by its author, Maurice Samuels,

the Betty Jane Anlian Professor of French at Yale University. Maurice, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Why does this case still grip the imagination? Why is it so fascinating?

Yeah, it's a good question. I personally have been fascinated,

fascinated by the case since I was a kid. I think that as a kid, what gripped me was that

the name Devil's Island, where Dreyfus was sent after he was condemned for treason.

But I think what captures people's imagination is his innocence. It's the ultimate case of being

wrongfully accused and then fighting to clear your name and eventually winning. So it really has,

he's really this model heroic victim. All of France gets involved in the case,

and then he's eventually exonerated. And it's, you know, there's so many ups and downs. There's

so many colorful characters involved in the case that it really has something for everyone in this

case. And there's a sense of anti-Semitism too. Yeah, of course. But we'll get to that in a sec.

But there's also this thing about, you read about, you read this case, and it's just so

hard.

It's so hard to prove the obvious. This man didn't do it. And yet, how many years did it

take for that finally to be proved? Yeah, well, he was first accused in 1894

of selling military secrets to Germany, and then it took until 1906 for him to be fully exonerated.

Tell us about, plot details, I love these plot details. Tell us about how the French

are,

army knew that they had a traitor in its ranks. Tell us about the ordinary track.

Right. Okay. So, this is one of also my favorite details about the case. So, the French had a spy

in the German embassy or in the German military attache's office. And the spy was the cleaning

lady. She was an illiterate French cleaning lady. And the,

her, her bosses knew that she was illiterate. So, didn't think much of just ripping up very

sensitive documents and throwing them in the wastebasket and the trash.

Oh, it's bliss. It's bliss. Yes.

And then she would take it down the street to the French counterintelligence office,

and they would reassemble the documents. And, you know, by doing this, they came across one day

proof that some French officer was,

was selling military secrets to Germany, was offering to sell military secrets to Germany.

So they knew they had a traitor in their midst. And for various reasons that I discuss in

the book, suspicion pretty quickly fell on Dreyfus.

Let's talk about the background anti-Semitic rage that was pouring through France at this

time. Why, what was it like? How did it drive the case?

Yeah.

So that is, um, you know, when we ask, well, why did, uh, suspicion fall on Dreyfus? The,

the answer is that the table had been laid in many ways by the enormous rise in anti-Semitism

that really started in France in the mid 1880s. Um, this was true, not only in France,

there was a rise of anti-Semitism in Germany as well. In fact, the, the term anti-Semitism,

anti-Semitism was a coined in Germany in the 1870s. It was a relatively new term. Uh,

but in France, the Jews, I should back up and say that, uh, France, people don't realize

that France was the first European country to give Jews full civil rights. It had done

that very early in the French revolution in 1790 and 91. By the middle of the 19th century,

French Jews had full equality.

Yeah.

They were pretty high in French national life in many different areas of French national

life. So in banking and business, of course, but also in government, in the arts and especially,

and this was almost not a total exception, but made France pretty distinct in, uh, the,

uh, civil service, including in the army. So in the, in the state apparatus.

But there were not many, but there were not many of them.

Well, no, there were not many Jews in France. Jews represented 0.2% of the French population,

but by the 1880s, they had gained a fair amount of prom, prominence, and this led to a backlash

in French national life. So in 1886, this, uh, muck wracking journalist named Edouard

Drumond published, uh, a book called La France Juive, Jewish France, which was about Jewish

France, which was a thousand-page screed denouncing and wildly exaggerating the presence

of Jews in French national life, saying that Jews had done a kind of takeover of France. He said

that there were 500,000 Jews in France, which was a wild exaggeration. There were more like 80,000.

And one of his targets, he also starts a daily newspaper, a daily anti-Semitic newspaper,

the whole purpose of this newspaper was to denounce Jews. And one of its main targets

in the early 1890s was the presence of Jews in the military. So he accused all Jews of being

potential traitors to the nation, especially these Jews in the army. And this, you know,

so it came as no surprise when they find that there's a traitor in their midst, that suspicion

fell on Dreyfus, who was the only Jew on the army's general staff.

In that stew of anti-Semitism, there are elements familiar to us today. I mean,

one of the things that Trumont seemed to drive him and to drive those who believed his message

was a fear of change, a fear of the modern world, a fear of what was coming down the track,

and a fear of having foreigners in the midst. They're very familiar political drivers,

even today.

Yes, exactly. You know, this is, you know, Jews represented, had represented for a long time,

one of, if not the most noticeable other groups in France, since, you know, now France has many

other minorities. But, you know, at this time in the 19th century, Jews were the most visible

other in France.

Well, because they were, because they were skilled, successful,

um, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and therefore, of course, they represented

competition of some kind, some kind of foreign competition that couldn't be, that couldn't be

quelled.

Yeah, they, um, you know, they were this small minority, but they were clustered in Paris and,

uh, they were, um, you know, kind of overrepresented in certain sectors of the French

economy. That led to a lot of jealousy.

And a lot of competition. Um, so, uh, it's an interesting kind of irony in the case that,

uh, one of the great defenders, who I assume we'll talk about in a minute, of Dreyfus,

Emile Zola, uh, a couple years before the Dreyfus Affair, so in the early 1890s,

had written a novel called Money. It was a novel about the, the Paris Stock Exchange, the bourse,

and it's an anti-Semitic.

novel. He basically, uh, says the Jews are, uh, have, have acquired through their history,

but also through their innate characteristics, a superiority for making money, and Christians

just can't compete.

That's basically the thesis of the novel, and this was very common at the time. There was a

tremendous amount of, of jealousy and resentment for this tiny minority.

But there were, in this story,

there are a number of men who,

come into the plot,

as antisemites,

disliking,

and distrusting Jews,

who become some of the greatest allies for Dreyfus.

Yeah, that's one of the wonderful aspects of the case, that in fact,

uh, Zola is one example, but also Picard.

Uh, who,

Uh, the Crucial Man.

Yeah, Crucial Man.

Who uncovers evidence. We're skipping ahead a little bit, but he uncovers evidence

Uh,

who the real traitor was. Through the same ordinary track, this time they find another

letter that's addressed to the actual traitor, who was a sort of dissolute, minor nobleman

named Esterhazy from a Hungarian noble family. And he was...

Morris, Morris, Morris, I'm going to stop you there because you're ruining the narrative.

You're just ruining the narrative. I know I invited you to ruin the narrative,

but you're ruining the narrative. Because before we even get to Dreyfus being tried,

there was another element in this as well, wasn't it? That the Dreyfus family came from Alsace.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. So this is, you have to put this in the historical context of the 1890s,

which is after the disaster.

The disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870, where France loses miserably to Prussia,

which then united and became Germany. And they lose their two eastern provinces of Alsace and

Lorraine. Alsace and Lorraine happened to be where most of the Jews in France lived at the time,

most of the Ashkenazi Jews, including Dreyfus's family. So,

Dreyfus, like many patriotic French Jews, his family opted for French citizenship. And he was

sent as a child after the Franco-Prussian War to boarding school in Paris. But he and his Alsatian-ness

was held against him. Even though Alsace had become a kind of rallying cry for French citizenship,

he was held against him. And he was held against him. And he was held against him. And he was held

against him. And he was held against him. And he was held against him. And he was held against him.

French patriots. But he was a little bit suspected. He was, you know, his Alsace became

Germany. Part of his family still lived there. He was known to make trips there. That was one of the

things that they held against him. So there was a kind of double taint of

foreignness here. He was a Jew and he was from Alsace. Yes. But there has been, there have been

writers about this case who kind of dismiss his Jewishness and argue that he was barely Jewish at

all. What's Jewish? What's Jewish? What's Jewish? What's Jewish? What's Jewish? What's Jewish? What's

your view of that argument? Yeah. So that is one of the things that I argue against in the book.

So Hannah Arendt, for example, in her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism,

basically holds Dreyfus up as an assimilated Jew. And as typical of the, the, his class in France of,

of bourgeois, wealthy Jews who had given up all attachments to the French,

Jewish community and to the Jewish religion. What I discovered doing the research was that this was

not true at all. It's true that Dreyfus was an ardent French patriot. He was completely

identified with France, but that did not mean that he therefore had given up his Jewishness.

It was not a zero-sum game for Jews at the time in France. They felt Jews like Dreyfus

felt that their Jewishness and their Frenchness could go hand in hand. And in fact, what I

discovered was that even though Dreyfus was not personally himself a religious person, he was

really a rationalist, a scientist. He came from a family that was at least nominally Orthodox.

His wife, Lucie, who was really a heroine of the affair, which we can talk about, she was very

practicing.

And I was able to, in doing research for the project, look through the archive that the Dreyfus

family donated to the museum, the Jewish museum in Paris. And there are many ritual objects

belonging to the Dreyfus family, including Lucie's prayer book, for example, her Hebrew prayer book.

Also, the Dreyfus family were in a kind of Jewish milieu. Alfred and his wife, Lucie,

were married in the Grand Synagogue.

of Paris by the chief rabbi of France, who was a close family friend. So, by no means were they

assimilated. If by assimilated, we mean having given up their Jewish identity. For that reason,

I prefer in the book the term integrated. And this is exactly what the anti-Semites

objected to, wasn't it? The notion that you could be a Jew and French, and you could live in French

society as a Jew. That was what the anti-Semites objected to. And so, I think that's what I'm

What was despised and considered dangerous, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was kind of a no-win situation for Jews. Because if they didn't try to integrate,

they were accused of being foreigners and outsiders and denounced for that reason. And

this was also, I should say, a time when Eastern European Jews were starting to

flee the pogroms in Russia and Poland and to flee West. And so, there were many,

many Orthodox Yiddish-speaking Jews showing up in Paris, at least 10,000, certainly by the 1910s,

or a little bit later. But, you know, many thousand were showing up in Paris. So, they were hated for

being too demonstrably Jewish. But at the same time, Jews who had started to blend in were also

seen as deeply threatening. And this was also one of the big targets in La France Juive, that how to

tell a Jew from a Jewish perspective. And so, I think that's a very, very important point. And so,

this is where you get a new racialized anti-Semitism, where people become obsessed with

being able to identify Jews by biological or facial features.

Yeah, to pick them out. To pick them out.

Yes, exactly. Otherwise, blend it in too well.

Yes.

On Late Night Live, I'm speaking with Maurice Samuels, the author of Alfred Dreyfus,

The Man at the Center of the Affair. Maurice, now, let's go back to the plot.

Okay.

To the plot.

So, there is a document, which at the very most, perhaps the handwriting looked vaguely like

Dreyfus's handwriting, but that's probably overstating the case. And there is a military

tribunal, and it breaks all the rules. Yes, exactly. So, that document that was,

that the French counter-espionage service fined pieces together that had been thrown in the trash,

offering to sell military secrets to Germany. They, they're trying to figure out who,

who could be the, the, the traitor. They erroneously reason that the traitor was

probably someone on the general staff of the army because, well, for various reasons, and also

probably someone with expertise in artillery. So, they look at the list of people on the general

staff.

This is the only Jewish name. They begin immediately to suspect him, and they compare

his handwriting to the handwriting in, in the document offering to sell secrets. And they're,

it's superficially similar. So, they decide he must be the guilty party. They arrest him and

put him in, subject him to a court-martial. And of course, they bring in expert handwriting

experts to the court-martial.

Who are divided. And so, some of them say, yes, there are some similarities. Other ones say this

is clearly not the same handwriting. And they get around this. They come up with the preposterous

self-forgery hypothesis that he must have forged his own handwriting to disguise it

in this letter. And it was completely ridiculous.

Absolutely makes sense, doesn't it? But they, but they showed the judge documents that were

never seen in court.

And the,

the fact that they had done this was kept secret.

Yeah, this was the big violation, even of French military law at that time. So, they construct a

secret dossier of supposedly incriminating evidence, but really it's, it's circumstantial at

best. They don't tell Dreyfus's lawyers what the secret dossier consists of. So, they have no way

of being able to defend themselves.

In reality,

there was a

document

referring to that's sent from the German military attache to his Italian counterpart,

who was also his lover, by the way.

Yes, a detail I noted in the book.

Right. I mean, this, this story has something for everyone. So, in one of his fairly risque letters,

he refers to a known traitor and he calls him that scoundrel D. Now, the French counter-espionage

knew very well that this,

this was referring to someone else, not Dreyfus. But they put this into the secret dossier. They tell the judges it was obviously Dreyfus. So, it was that kind of stuff that winds up getting Dreyfus condemned for treason.

Before he sent off to, to Devil's Island down there in the Caribbean, there was a ceremony in the, in the courtyard of the École Militaire.

Yeah, this is one of the most,

one of the most dramatic moments in the case. So, they have a, a ritual degradation ceremony of Dreyfus.

He is, they assemble,

the, the

representatives of the French military in the courtyard of the École Militaire.

So, we're kind of in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower here.

10,000 spectators are crowded around

in order to witness this. They bring out Dreyfus, they parade him,

around the courtyard. And then, a military officer rips the insignia off of his, his uniform and breaks his sword in two over his knee.

And Dreyfus, this whole time, is screaming, I am innocent, long live France. And I, I really try to imagine in the book what this ardent patriot must have been feeling at this moment, as 10,000 spectators are screaming,

death to the traitor, death to Judas.

And of course, that, you know, the inherent anti-Semitism of that. It must have been just,

it's impossible to imagine what he must have been feeling. And how he was able to maintain his dignity through this is, is really,

really a testament to his incredible fortitude.

How many years was he on Devil's Island?

He was there for almost five years.

And the fact, also, that he was able to

survive that ordeal is also testament to his fortitude, because the conditions were abominable on this island.

He was the only prisoner. He was watched day and night, but his guards never spoke to him.

So he, he had, by the end, had, had really lost the ability to speak. His horse, his voice was so harsh.

They gave him almost no food at the beginning.

Eventually, his family was able to send him rations that, that they had to pay for.

Though it was burning hot, he was, had a light shining on his, his face, day and night, which meant that as, at night, oh, I should also say, that at some point, they started to chain him to the bed, so he couldn't even roll over.

And of course, this light shining on him.

Yeah, this light shining on him attracted all kinds of bugs.

This was the tropics that were crawling all over him, and he couldn't get, he couldn't move to get rid of them.

So, of course, he started to suffer from all kinds of tropical diseases.

It was really, really brutal conditions.

But at this point, his fate was not a great, a matter of great public contention, was it?

The family was keeping things, the family was keeping memory of him alive and keeping him alive, but the public had moved on, had not.

Yeah, people forgot about this, including most, I should say, at the beginning, most members of the Jewish community.

They thought this was a terrible, they assumed he must be guilty, this is a terrible thing, better forgotten.

His family, and mainly his brother, Mathieu, and his wife, Lucie, were alone.

They had a few supporters, but not many, and they realized that they had a huge task ahead of them if they were going to try to get this case reopened.

They knew he was innocent, but how do you prove that someone's innocent?

And so they, you know, that's one of the dramatic elements of the affair is how they eventually started to interest people in the case in order to get it reopened.

But while that was going on, and now I realize I'm rolling on a bit, but while that was going on, the Ordinary Track came back into operation and delivered something to Commandant Georges Picard.

Yeah, this is the Petit Bleu.

Isn't it great, the Petit Bleu?

Yeah.

Remembered from my childhood, yes.

Yeah, it refers to the kind of paper that people used to send messages through the pneumatic tubes.

This was kind of almost like an early version of email at the time.

So you could send almost instantaneous messages to people through this network of pneumatic tubes throughout.

On this kind of thin blue paper.

So they discover, through the Ordinary Track, the spy, the cleaning lady, finds a letter addressed to the actual spy.

So this is what I was alluding to before.

And this is this—

Naming him.

Yeah, this dissolute nobleman named Esterhazy.

Ferdinand Walson Esterhazy.

So they—so Picard—

Picard, who has now taken over the counterintelligence office, he himself, as you said, was an anti-Semite, but he was an honest man.

So he realizes that this is the actual traitor, that Dreyfus must be innocent.

He goes to his superiors, including the minister of war.

He's surprised that they're not surprised when he shows this.

But, of course, they know Dreyfus was innocent.

All along.

And they politely thank him and then ship him off on a dangerous mission to Tunisia, hoping that he'll get killed and disappear, Picard.

They want—this is when—this is one of the really evil moments where the French army really gets involved in a kind of conspiracy and cover-up where they start to defend an actual traitor.

It's unbelievable.

But this is where I wonder whether Dreyfus being a Jew has any bearing at all on this particular part of the plot, because the military is doubling down on their mistake, on their corruption.

And whether Dreyfus was a Catholic or a Buddhist or a Jew, it wouldn't have mattered, would they?

They had to double down, and they did so ruthlessly.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, you know, did they have to double down?

I think—

Oh, no.

Look, I take your point.

They could have behaved honestly, but having decided, they weren't.

Yes.

Yeah.

But there were a lot of anti-Semites in—among the army who wanted to see Dreyfus—

Innocent or guilty.

Yes, they wanted to see him kept on Devil's Island.

And also, by this point, you know, the case is starting to—

Interest people.

And France is starting to be divided between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.

And they realize that a lot of the army's supporters at this point are anti-Semitic.

So it, you know, I don't want to say that it had nothing to do with it, but I think you're right that there was a sort of instinct to double down on their mistake rather than just—

Self-familiar.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, I think about this in my—it's a good life lesson to—you make a mistake, you should—it's always better to just admit it before things get even worse.

It's always the cover-up.

On Late Night Live, I'm speaking with Maurice Samuels, author of Alfred Dreyfus, The Man at the Center of the Affair.

You talk, Maurice, of what followed, of the years that followed and the campaign that really gripped the world.

As an ideological civil war.

Yeah, yeah.

So France was completely divided at this point, certainly by 1898, 1899, between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.

Even families were divided.

So the family of the writer Marcel Proust, for example.

Exactly, and he writes about that.

Yeah, he was obsessed with the affair.

And he was an ardent Dreyfusard, an ardent supporter of Dreyfus, as was his brother and his Jewish mother.

His father was not Jewish, and he supported the army against Dreyfus.

So there's a famous cartoon from the time—I don't actually talk about it in the book, but I probably should have—by the famous cartoonist Caron Dache, which has two panels.

And in one, it shows a family dinner table, people sitting around.

And it says, the caption is something like,

They promised they would not speak about the Dreyfus affair.

Then the second panel, all the food is on the floor, the tablecloth is ripped off, everyone is at each other's throats.

And the caption is, they talked about it.

Splendid, splendid.

But this campaign at least brought Dreyfus back from Devil's Island to face yet another trial.

With an oddity.

With an odd outcome.

Yeah.

So, I mean, what happens is they eventually realize, you know, the identity of the real traitor, Esterhazy, comes to light.

They put him on trial.

It's obvious that he's guilty.

And I should say that guy has guilt written all across—written across his forehead.

He has gambling debts.

He openly scorns France.

He's a dastardly villain.

And he's got a mustache, which you say is proof of guilt in itself.

It is.

It's a very, very suspicious-looking mustache, like from one of those cartoon villains.

And he is found innocent.

So this is so outrageous that he's found innocent.

That really is sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.

And then more and more people get involved in the case, including the novelist Emile Zola,

who, as I had said, had been involved.

He's not an anti-Semite, but is realizing that this case is tearing France apart.

And anti-Semitism is a threat to the republic.

And this case is a threat to the republic for him.

So he comes out strongly in favor of Dreyfus, writes this blockbuster article with the banner headline,

Jacques, I accuse, where he basically lists all—exactly what had happened in the case.

Dreyfus accusing all of the military officers of conspiracy and cover-up.

He forces them to sue him for treason, which he's hoping—that's his plan, actually,

because he knows that if they do, that will have to be in civil court.

And the evidence or lack of evidence against Dreyfus will become known.

Yeah, he can get the documents.

That's the strategy, isn't it?

That's the key.

A familiar strategy even today.

Yeah.

So they have a trial for Zola.

He's found guilty of slander, but has to flee to England.

But really, the truth comes out at that point.

They force—there are a few more things that happen I'm condensing.

They basically decide to overturn the first verdict to bring him back from Devil's Island for another court-martial.

This is in the summer, late summer of 1899.

He—at this point, Dreyfus thinks he's won.

He thinks this is—it's just going to be a formality at this case.

Everyone knows he must be innocent.

But in fact, they bring him back for this really mediatized trial.

So at this point, the first court-martial was three days.

Nobody really knew about it.

This one goes on over the weeks in Rennes, in kind of northwest France.

It's covered by the entire world.

And they—all the evidence comes out again.

Dreyfus, though, at this point is a broken man.

He's only in his late 30s, but his hair has turned white.

He's skeletally thin.

They have to pad his uniform so he doesn't scare people.

He can barely speak, as I said, because he hadn't spoken in five years.

And he doesn't make a very good impression in front of the court.

He also was a naturally kind of shy guy.

He was a guy who didn't play to the cameras.

That was against his ethos.

He's not a copybook hero, is he?

No.

He was a kind of technocrat within the army.

And he was a very shy, modest person.

And so he didn't know how to play to the crowd.

And people—he's not—doesn't make for a very sympathetic figure.

And in fact, the military judges are divided this time.

But there's a majority that finds him guilty again, although with extenuating circumstances, which is absurd.

I mean, it's basically, you know, how there can be—I say in the book, how there can be extenuating circumstances when it comes to treason.

You know, they didn't explain.

It's basically they—everyone knows he must be innocent.

So there's a huge outcry when he's found guilty a second time.

And France is afraid at this point that other countries are going to boycott the 1900 World's Fair.

And so they offer him a pardon.

I love the detail of the World's Fair.

I love the fact that they are wanting France to be a happy, joyful place for the World's Fair and have everybody there.

A little like the Olympics.

Yeah, I should say it was a little like the Olympics.

An Olympian moment.

And Dreyfus rejoins the army.

He extraordinarily rejoins the army.

But they once again find a way of doing him down.

Right.

It's really, really—they basically add insult to injury at this point because they refuse—so they reinstate him in the army.

But they refuse to give him credit for the time that he served on Devil's Island.

So everyone who had entered the army at his—

At the same time as him, had a much higher rank.

They give him, you know, they reinstate him at a lower rank than what he should have had.

He goes to complain to Picard, who by this point is minister of war a little bit later.

And he says, there's nothing I can do for you.

So Dreyfus politely, in a dignified manner, resigns from the army at that point.

Although he goes back in to fight in World War I, too, which is incredible.

Which is kind of splendid, isn't it?

Because by that time, he was not a young man.

And he went back in, fought in the First World War, and then just sort of quietly sort of died in when?

1930s sometime?

Yeah, he dies in the mid-1930s.

After Hitler has come to power, yeah.

Yeah, brings us to the modern world.

But to what extent do you credit the story that it was Dreyfus' fate that convinced—

Yeah.

—a number of Jews that it was time now to have a land of their own because they were not safe in Western Europe?

Yeah, so that's one of the things that you hear all the time, that Theodor Herzl founded—invented Zionism.

He would claim this.

Herzl would claim this himself, that he invented Zionism when he witnessed the degradation of Dreyfus.

He was a reporter for a German-language newspaper.

He was covering the case.

And he did witness the degradation of Dreyfus.

But—and I'm not the first one to uncover this.

There's actually another book by Derek Penslar on a biography of Herzl in the same Jewish Lives series where he shows in that book—and other people have said it, too—that, in fact, Herzl had had the idea for Zionism shortly before that, but definitely before.

But there's no doubt that the Dreyfus Affair feeds the early Zionist movement.

So the first Zionist congresses are happening in the very years that the Dreyfus Affair reaches its peak at the end of the 19th century, in 1899, for example.

So it is true that the early Zionist theorists—so Herzl, but also people like Max Norton—

definitely used the case.

This was part of their—you know, what they, you know, tried to show was that if Jews aren't safe even in enlightened France, they really aren't safe anywhere and need a land of their own.

So they definitely—the Dreyfus Affair is definitely used by the Zionists.

What was the fate of anti-Semitism in France after, you know, after Dreyfus is so spectacularly, really exonerated?

Does it die?

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting.

So it reaches—I should say it reaches a frenzy peak in 1898 and 1899.

So after Zola's Jacuzzi is published, there are anti-Semitic riots in something like 69 towns and cities throughout France and in colonial Algeria.

Many of these towns have no Jews.

So there's a kind of anti-Semitic frenzy.

There's actually a great book by the—

There's a French historian, Pierre Birnbaum, called The Anti-Semitic Moment, where he talks about those anti-Semitic riots.

So anti-Semitic is—anti-Semitism is at a kind of frenzied peak.

They're almost like pogroms, especially in Algeria, where people are actually killed.

And so—but what's amazing is that it pretty quickly recedes to a certain extent.

And I would say that one of the big factors that—

makes it go away for a while, at least, is World War I.

So French people—there's something called the Sacred Union, where French people put aside their differences, including their political differences, in order to kind of come together to fight the war.

And that does lead to a kind of—a temporary receding of anti-Semitism, which, of course, comes back again in a big way during World War II,

during the Vichy period, which many of the former anti-Dreyfusards see as their revenge.

So they—Jews, of course, during World War II are stripped of rights, including Dreyfus's family.

Dreyfus is dead at this point, but his wife, Lucie, has to go into hiding.

The children have to—his son's family—his son had been a great hero in World War I.

He has to fight.

He has to flee to New York with his family.

The daughter's family goes into hiding.

And Dreyfus's favorite granddaughter, who is a resistance hero, is captured and deported as a Jew and dies in Auschwitz.

On Late Night Live, I'm talking to Maurice Samuels, who's the author of Alfred Dreyfus, the man at the center of the affair.

It's time by now, really, to ask you, what do you see as anti-Semitism?

What is it?

Yeah, that's the—I run a program to study anti-Semitism at Yale, and that—we have endless lectures talking about, you know, trying to figure this out.

So anti-Semitism can mean various things.

It can mean, you know, on a basic level, it's prejudice against or hatred of Jews and Judaism.

It can take many different forms.

It can take a religious form.

Okay.

Of course, there's a kind of, you know, Christian anti-Semitism that goes back thousands of years where Jews are blamed for rejecting Christ.

And some people accuse them of killing Christ even.

So there's this religious form.

There's also an economic form that takes shape beginning in the Middle Ages in Europe because Jews were forced into certain occupations, including money lending in Europe.

So that leads to different kinds of resentment.

There's a racial form that we talked about in the 19th century where Jews are just seen as an alien race polluting the bloodstream.

And then there are various political forms of anti-Semitism.

And I think that's some of what we're seeing now, arguably.

I mean, this is hotly contested now.

But there certainly is a form of—

of anti-Semitism where Jews are suspected and ostracized for political beliefs, including support for Israel.

But by your definition, is it possible to disapprove of what Israel is doing in Gaza, for instance, and do so on a basis that is not anti-Semitic?

Of course, yes.

Oh, definitely.

And I think there's a lot of confusion around this.

And there's certainly a lot of instrumentalization, I think, of anti-Semitism, people using anti-Semitism to, you know, kind of hurling it at their opponents as a way to kind of shut down debate.

There's certainly a way to criticize Israel's policies that's not anti-Semitic.

But at the same time, I think I'm also very troubled.

I think I'm also very troubled by the fact that just because some people are instrumentalizing anti-Semitism, that doesn't mean that there's not anti-Semitism going on.

Oh, sure, sure.

Now, right.

So I think that that's the question.

So I think if you, you know, certainly if you are, you know, critical of Netanyahu's policies, for example, many, many Jews, including myself, are very critical of Netanyahu.

That doesn't make you anti-Semitic.

I think where it becomes more difficult and more problematic is if you say that Israel has no right to exist.

Israel is, you know, the only country that people say has no right to exist.

I think that, for me anyway, and this is debated, but, you know, that borders on, you know, I think that then you have to start to ask, you know, why is that?

What prejudices or what, you know, assumptions go along with that belief?

Yeah.

But look.

At least, because I'm a born optimist, at least surely France has settled down with the inheritance of Dreyfus.

Surely everybody now in France understands this was an innocent man that prejudice of the nastiest kind consigned to a horrible fate who was exonerated by the world.

Surely France is now completely au fait.

Hey, that phrase just came to me.

Au fait with the Dreyfus.

In fact, no, you know, it's still a kind of hot button issue in some ways.

In the last presidential election in France, the far right candidate, Eric Zemmour, who oddly is Jewish, he's tried to outflank Marine Le Pen on the right and as a kind of dog whistle to his supporters, maybe because he was Jewish and he wanted to signal to them that, you know, he was Jewish.

So he was one of theirs.

He very famously in an interview said that the innocence of Dreyfus was not proven, something like that.

Gales of laughter when he said that?

No.

I mean, people, you know, so this is something it's still it still can be a kind of sensitive subject, I would say, for some, you know, kind of traditionalists on the right in the army.

You know, even though the history, but there is no doubt that Dreyfus was was innocent.

I should just say that.

But it still becomes a kind of way to galvanize the far right in France.

Marine Le Pen's party, what's its motto and where does it come from?

Yeah, that's that's so France.

This really this really rocked me.

Yes.

Yeah.

So La France aux Français.

This comes from the masthead of the anti-Semitic newspaper founded by Drummond.

I mean, it's just, you know, so there are, you know, echoes from that time still, you know, today.

And and the minister for culture in France, a man whose name resonates for completely different ways in Australia.

We think we would pronounce it Jack Lang.

How would the French pronounce Jack Lang?

Long.

Well, Jack Lang.

Jack Lang was a Frenchman.

Famous labor politician in Australia.

A different a different a different one.

A very, very different man.

But Jack Lang commissioned a statue of Dreyfus.

Where was it supposed to go and where did it end up?

Yeah.

So this is this was the subject of controversy.

They they get the famous artist Tim to make this very striking.

Slightly odd, I would say, sculpture of of Dreyfus sort of it's not a very realistic image.

Let's put it that way.

They're hoping it's supposed to go in the at the in the courtyard of the École Militaire.

And in fact, they don't want it there.

It kind of it's a long story.

It kind of they try different places.

And now it's in the courtyard of the Jewish Museum in Paris.

It was once the military had said not on our not in our.

Front yard wasn't it then suggested that it should go somewhere near the law courts.

But that was unhappy for the law courts.

Right.

And I should say there are other there are copies of the of this of this sculpture.

And in fact, they you know, they were they were going to have, you know, one, you know, other places in France.

And they eventually they have one in Israel now, too.

So, yes, so that it shows that the the the memory.

Of Dreyfus is still somewhat controversial in in France.

He's not.

And this is one of the things I try to do in the book is to really rehabilitate him as a man.

One of the things I try to show in the book is that he was an incredible not only was he innocent, but he was actually an incredible hero of the affair.

The fact that he was able to withstand so much suffering.

And that he did.

It with a purpose because he knew that he had to live long enough for truth to come out or else the forces of evil and darkness would have won.

So it's really his incredible fortitude.

And in reading his letters and his journal entry, which was later published, it's a book called Five Years of My Life.

You really see what an incredible, incredible man he was.

And that's one of the things that I think people don't.

Fully realize either.

There was recently a couple of years ago, a film by Roman Polanski about the Dreyfus affair called, I think, an officer and a spy in English.

It didn't come out in the United States because he's he's canceled for good reasons.

But I was able to watch a bootleg version of it.

And he he really, you know, he celebrates Picard.

Picard is the hero of the movie.

And Dreyfus himself is sort of an unsympathetic.

Character.

And so I really wanted to try to argue against that in the book.

Could it ever happen again?

I mean, does the world learn lessons from a story like this?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I mean, you know, I think I mean, they're look, they're they're cases of wrongful conviction all the time, you know, in so many countries.

One of the things about the affair is that, first of all, the Dreyfus.

His family had the resources to fight for his exoneration.

That's one of the striking things.

But sure, you know, this kind of this kind of case certainly could happen.

And, you know, would it happen in the exact same way?

You know, I think it could happen to lots of, you know, lots of minority groups are scapegoated in France and elsewhere.

And so you could easily imagine this happening.

Well, indeed, that cases of this are not on this scale.

But.

Wrongful conviction is the bread and butter of a lot of the world's journalism.

Yeah.

But the thing about this case is the resolution of the military to just not face facts.

Isn't that isn't that one of the commanding lessons of the Dreyfus affair that that never ends well?

Yeah, I would hope so.

But I really hope so.

The military.

I would would learn that lesson from the case.

I should say that he you know, we didn't talk.

I said he was pardoned in 1899, but France did come around.

And in 1906, he was officially there.

He had another trial.

They found they were able to to find, you know, enough evidence to trigger another trial.

And at that point, he was officially declared innocent in France.

So, you know, France.

Did did make amends at that point.

But, you know, did they what lesson did they learn?

You know, not that many decades later, they deported and gassed 70,000 Jews.

So, you know, you wonder, yeah, these these, you know, horrible events to Jews.

But not only Jews, you know, don't stop and don't go away.

And, you know, the the prejudice against minority groups.

In France, but all over the world is obviously still very much with us.

Maurice, thanks so much for joining us on Late Night Live.

I've been talking to Maurice Samuels, who is the author of this new book on the on the Dreyfus case published by Yale University Press.

It's brief.

It's forensic.

It's beautifully written.

Alfred Dreyfus, the man at the center of the affair.

Maurice, thanks.

Thank you so much.

It was really a pleasure.

And that's Late Night Live for the week.

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