Aftershocks

By Stefan Kanfer

France was in torment . Youths marched through the streets of Nantes shouting lethal threats at their neighbors. The Jewish-owned shops of Nancy were invaded and the synagogue besieged. In Paris, anti-Semitic troops marched in the Latin Quarter, on the boulevards and around the Palais de Justice: familiar sights to students of World War II--but this was two generations before, in 1897.

The violence was triggered by the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of treason against the state. His trial, exile to Devil's Island and exoneration have been retailed in countless volumes and films; the most celebrated, The Life of Emile Zola, won an Academy Award for best picture in 1937. But The Affair manages to invest the drama with renewed pity and urgency. French Professor Jean-Denis Bredin is not content with a toneless recapitulation; the dark background is carefully illuminated, and the major characters and walk-ons are given full dimension, including, at times, the homosexual flirtations of spies and Dreyfus' adventures with a series of mistresses.

Ironically, of the large cast, Captain Dreyfus is the least compelling. Framed by traitorous colleagues, he was at first incredulous, then hysterical and finally benumbed. His family and friends tirelessly protested his innocence, joined after two years by Emile Zola, the most famous and reviled writer of his time. The analyst of motives thundered what others had only whispered: the dominant powers of France, threatened by Germany, narcotized by visions of a glorious and irretrievable past, regarded Jews as dual threats. In one view, they were radicals seeking to undo the state. When that label did not adhere, they were vicious usurers, arms of the Rothschild octopus. The climate of xenophobia was intensified behind barracks doors , where a rising Jewish officer was considered an insult to history and an affront to destiny.

On Jan.13, 1898, Zola published what Bredin calls "a great document, one which marks an essential date in the history of journalism." J 'Accuse was "an indictment of the forces and virtues of traditional France, its religious passion, military spirit, and hierarchies." Zola's outrage proved contagious. Slowly the bodyguard of lies surrounding the actual villains began to defect. Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, a German agent, fled the country. Lieut. Colonel Hubert Henry, who had forged Dreyfus' handwriting on incriminating documents, committed suicide.

After twelve years of suffering, the captain was finally pardoned and passed from sight. But as Bredin convincingly argues, the next century was to be dramatically altered by the verdict and its reversal. If the anti-Dreyfus agitators and clerics represented France at its worst, the Dreyfusards, most of them Christian, demonstrated the nation's passion for justice and equality. Both sides continued to seethe until they collided once again in 1940, when the Third Reich occupied the country. Events like the upcoming trial of Nazi Captain Klaus Barbie, now imprisoned in Lyon, continue to show how many of the old "forces and virtues" survive to this day.

Nor was the rest of the world immune to the trial's aftershocks. "It is known," Bredin concludes, "that the spectacle of Dreyfus' degradation played an important role in the evolution of Theodore Herzl's thinking. It was then that he perceived the limitations and illusions of the dream of assimilation and began to reflect on a Jewish Nation." The Middle East is 3,000 miles and light-years from fin-de-siecle France, but there is scarcely a nation there or anywhere unaffected by the Affair. Alfred Dreyfus was a man of middle stature and achievement, but he continues to throw a long and ominous shadow. --By Stefan Kanfer