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France promotes Dreyfus to brigadier-general 131 years after wrongful conviction
Jewish officer who was stripped of his rank and imprisoned now honoured in symbolic gesture to combat antisemitism
November 21, 2025 15:35
Jewish officer who was stripped of his rank and imprisoned now honoured in symbolic gesture to combat antisemitism
November 21, 2025 15:35Alfred Dreyfus has been posthumously promoted to the rank of brigadier-general 131 years after he was wrongly convicted of treason.
The trial of the army captain in 1894 is the most notorious case of antisemitism in French history, and at the time moved novelist Emile Zola to write his famous pamphlet entitled J’accuse… in defence of Dreyfus.
The promotion took place on Tuesday, in the latest official attempt to atone for the historic injustice.
It is seen as a significant symbol of France’s commitment to combat the recent surge in antisemitism which faces the largest Jewish community beyond Israel and the US.
The honour had been signed into law by President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on Monday before taking effect the following day.
The statute states: "The French nation posthumously promotes Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general."
The law had been passed by both houses of the French parliament earlier in the year.
The “Dreyfus affair” consumed France in a political crisis over antisemitism after the Jewish army captain from Alsace was arrested and tried on suspicion of passing secrets to a German military official.
The claim was based on a flawed comparison of Dreyfus’s handwriting with that found on a discarded document containing confidential information in the official’s wastepaper bin.
Although there was no hard evidence against Dreyfus, he was found guilty, stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He was sent to the Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana, where many prisoners died in the brutally harsh conditions.
However, France’s intelligence chief Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart continued to look into the case and found the handwriting on the discarded document belonged to another officer.
Dreyfus was brought back from Devil’s Island to France to stand trial again.
He was found guilty a second time and sentenced to 10 years in jail, but amid public outrage in 1899 he was given an official pardon, with the conviction left still standing.
But in 1906 the conviction was overturned and he was exonerated by an appeal court.
Dreyfus resumed his army career with the rank of major and served in the First World War, fighting at Verdun and other battles.
He died aged 76 in 1935, aged 76.
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