Devil's Island, an islet in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Cuba, part of a French prison camp complex in northern French Guiana, used from 1852 to 1946. Alfred Dreyfus, a completely innocent man, spent four years in solitary confinement in a stockade here, and an additional seven years in France trying to clear his name--until he was finally vindicated, on July 20, 1906.
The Dreyfus Affair contains important lessons for today. 1) It shows the lengths to which officially-sanctioned injustice can go, while actual offenders within the government are officially protected. 2) It reminds us of Devil's Island, the far-off extra-territorial prison camp the French government maintained for 94 years, where prisoners could be held in perpetuity, with no hope of appeal, eventually forgotten. 3) It is a demonstration that many people on the far right can be so pig-headed that they go on believing falsehoods they endorse, years or even generations after the truth has come out. 4) It shows that justice can finally prevail, if people continue to fight for it, for a long time if need be, without ever giving up.
July 20 is the anniversary of both the beginning and the end of the Dreyfus Affair. On July 20, 1894, a French Army officer with friends in high places began selling information to Germany. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely identified as the traitor, and sentenced to lifetime solitary confinement in France's special extraterritorial prison camp on Devil's Island. A year later, French Intelligence discovered the real traitor, but instead of freeing Dreyfus, the High Command began a decade-long cover-up, shielding the actual perpetrator. False accusations against Dreyfus were leaked by the High Command, and published in the mainstream press, which persistently opposed any reopening of the case. The writer Emile Zola, who campaigned on behalf of Dreyfus, was subjected to bogus lawsuits--Zola's property was confiscated, and he had to spend a year in exile. Later, before Dreyfus was vindicated, his defender Zola died from "accidental" carbon monoxide poisoning. Even after Dreyfus was pardoned and later exonerated, many people on the right continued to believe he was guilty.
On July 20, 1894, French Army Major Esterhazy, an officer with connections in the highest circles of the French Military Command, began passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. French Intelligence soon discovered evidence of this, but Army Commandant du Paty de Clam (that was his real name), an anti-Semitic aristocrat, put the blame on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish officers on the French Army General Staff.
Court-martialed in December 1894, Dreyfus was found guilty of high treason. "Evidence" was kept secret on the grounds of national security, and the major newspapers supported the government. French Army Headquarters leaked false information against Dreyfus to the publisher of an openly anti-Semitic paper. Instead of publishing it himself, he passed it on to a mainstream Paris paper, Le Soir.
Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Devil's Island prison camp complex, a separately administered enclave, in the Atlantic Ocean near the French colony of Guiana. Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement there in April, 1895. A year later, in the spring of 1896, French Intelligence discovered that the real traitor was Major Esterhazy. But that changed nothing.
French government and military officials continued to try to cover this injustice up for years. In July 1899, after four years on Devil's Island, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a new trial. In September he was found guilty once again, and sentenced to ten years. But by now most reasonable people were convinced that Dreyfus was innocent, and the French President pardoned him ten days later.
Five years later, in 1904, the Dreyfus Case was officially reopened, and two years after that Dreyfus was finally exonerated. On July 20, 1906, twelve years after the Dreyfus Affair began, Dreyfus was rehabilitated at the Ecole Militaire, where he had been officially degraded in a humiliating spectacle eleven years earlier. This time the spectators cheered Dreyfus, and Dreyfus in turn shouted "Long Live France!"
Some right-wing people in France continue to believe to this day that Dreyfus was guilty, and over the years they have tried to oppose any efforts to make amends by officially honoring the memory of Dreyfus, who served gallantly in World War I.
But in 1998, President Chirac gave a speech officially apologizing to the descendants of both Dreyfus and Zola. Today, in the Fifteenth Arrondissement in Paris, you can visit Dreyfus Square, on Avenue Emile-Zola.
Links
Chronology and Bibliography
Devil's Island Photo-Study
Dreyfus Affair Documentation and Pictures
Books
France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Brief Documentary History (Paperback) by Michael Burns
The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus (Paperback) by Jean-Denis Bredin (large-scale, interesting study)
The Dreyfus Affair: "J'accuse" and Other Writings (Paperback) by Emile Zola, Eleanor Levieux (Translator)