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Aug 4, 2023 · Dreyfus was imprisoned in a tiny cell on Devil’s Island, where he despaired of ever being released. His family never gave up on his cause. (Christian F5UII, CC BY-Sa 4.0) Far from being buried, by mid-1896 the Dreyfus case had grown into a cause célèbre attracting partisans on both sides.
May 21, 2024 · While Dreyfus began serving a life sentence under brutal conditions in the notorious prison on Devil’s Island, off the coast of South America, his family back in Paris launched a campaign to ...
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Dec 28, 2023 · French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish descent, was convicted of treason in 1894 and sentenced to life in prison. In 1896, evidence arose that a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the one responsible for Dreyfus’ alleged crimes.
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The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that rocked France between 1894 and 1906 and revealed growing antisemitism across Europe.
A scandal that rocked France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Dreyfus affair involved a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans.
In 1894, after a French spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a ripped-up letter in a waste basket with handwriting said to resemble that of Dreyfus, he was court-martialed, found guilty of treason and sentenced to life behind bars on Devil’s Island off of French Guiana. In a public ceremony in Paris following his conviction, Dreyfus had the insignia torn from his uniform and his sword broken and was paraded before a crowd that shouted, “Death to Judas, death to the Jew.”
In 1896, the new head of the army’s intelligence unit, Georges Picquart, uncovered evidence pointing to another French military officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real traitor. However, when Picquart told his bosses what he’d discovered he was discouraged from continuing his investigation, transferred to North Africa and later imprisoned.
Nevertheless, word about Esterhazy’s possible guilt began to circulate. In 1898, he was court-martialed but quickly found not guilty; he later fled the country. After Esterhazy’s acquittal, a French newspaper published an open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” by well-known author Emile Zola in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the military of a major cover-up in the case. As a result, Zola was convicted of libel, although he escaped to England and later managed to return to France.
The Dreyfus affair deeply divided France, not just over the fate of the man at its center but also over a range of issues, including politics, religion and national identity.
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Totally illegally, Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement in prison, where Du Paty interrogated him day and night in order to obtain a confession, which failed. The captain was morally supported by the first Dreyfusard, Major Forzinetti, commandant of the military prisons of Paris.
January 5 - Degradation: Military degradation of Dreyfus. Dreyfus is publicly stripped of his rank in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire. April 14 - Imprisonment: Dreyfus is placed in solitary confinement on Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guyana. 1896.
May 20, 2024 · Dreyfus affair, political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centered on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in 1894.
