Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was wrongly convicted of treachery because of anti-Semitism.
French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated this week in Médan the Dreyfus Museum, a place of remembrance dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair installed in the house of Emile Zola, which also reopens to the public after 10 years of closure.
Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was wrongly convicted of treachery because of anti-Semitism.
“Do not forget anything of these past struggles, because they say that the world in which we live, as our country, as our Republic, are not taken for granted,” said Emmanuel Macron during the inauguration.
This place of memory, which opened its doors to the public on Friday, wants to perpetuate the memory of Emile Zola and Alfred Dreyfus, victim of a judicial and anti-Semitic frame-up dating from 1894. The French army captain was finally rehabilitated in 1906.
“There is in this museum what is inseparable between what makes the nation and what makes the French Republic: ideals, a love of language and this taste for truth and justice,” Macron said.
“You repeat the importance of this particular destiny, of this man who suffered the worst, humiliation, silence, isolation. Nothing will repair these humiliations but let’s not make them worse by letting them be forgotten, aggravated or repeated”, the president said.
Accompanied by former Prime Minister Manuel Valls and France’s Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia, Macron visited this museum which presents more than 500 documents on the ”Dreyfus Affair “, including a facsimile of the famous false report which incriminated the captain, as well as numerous anti-Semitic posters insulting novelist and journalist Émile Zola, who launched the famous “J’accuse,” an open letter to the French Republic’s president at the time, Félix Faure, saying Dreyfus was wrongfully imprisoned and blaming the army for covering up its erroneous conviction of Dreyfus.
The letter was also published on the front of the L’Aurore newspaper and caused a public frenzy. Dreyfus was finally pardoned in 1899 after it was revealed that evidence in the case against him was forged. His original conviction was overturned in 1906.
The museum is installed in a wing of the Maison Zola, the majestic villa restored after ten years of work, acquired by the writer in 1878 and where he wrote many of his greatest works.