In My Defence:
 Emile Zola
Can the Jew be Innocent?
(1991)
With Derek Jacobi as Emile Zola

Written and Devised by Jack Emery
Oyster Television Film Productions
Directed by Sam Mendes
BBC Series Producer Olga Edridge

The Dreyfus Case 

On February 7, 1898, the writer Emile Zola was summoned to stand trial in the Palais de Justice in Paris. He was being sued for libel, following his "Open Letter to the [French] President of the Republic", published one month earlier in the newspaper L'Aurore, under the catchy title "J'accuse!..." that the owner/editor Georges Clémenceau had coined.  In his article, Zola had openly accused high officials, military staffers and handwriting experts of meddling with the truth about the 1894 conviction of a certain Captain Dreyfus, after a shady spying case held in a controversial court-martial. A closed case, as far as the Law and the anti-Semitic General Staff were concerned: the Jewish traitor Dreyfus had been rightfully found guilty of selling intelligence secrets to Germany and sentenced to rot for the rest of his miserable life in solitary confinement on the Ile du Diable, far away off the coast of French Guyana. But, as early as 1895, however, Commandant Picquart, then  the Head of the Intelligence agency, had reported his conviction that Dreyfus was not a German agent and, since then, more and more evidence was surfacing indicating that Dreyfus had been framed.  With his deliberate intervention in favor of a man whose innocence he did not doubt, Zola knew he was himself going to be sued for libel, but he hoped that the publicity of his own trial would help make the reopening of the Dreyfus' case possible, at least in the conscience of the French public opinion.  What he did not expect, however, was the enormous political and intellectual brouhaha and odious violence his action would trigger. The very political French newspapers flared up, leading every celebrity around to take a stand, soon revealing and enhancing many deep-rooted but closeted aspects of the divided French people's consciousness, in a battle that would be waged for many years to come.

The popular press, totally free since 1881, was starting to feel its power. During the entire period, the medias therefore played the whole gamut of public emotions: that of racism, political manipulation, shady intelligence warfare, traditional values and their impact on Justice. During the Dreyfus case and its many twists and turns, the tabloids enjoyed enlarging pointless events to please an avid yet saturated audience, as they presented trivia as definite proof  -- all the problems of sensationalism that we know so well today. But it had all the melodramatic pathos of the soap operas of the time, as it was filled with coups de theatre, double agents, anonymous letters, planted evidence, assassination attempts, sudden deaths, forgeries and bribes, veiled ladies, poignant victims and arrogant villains.  As expected, during most of the court audiences, Zola was trashed by the media and violence erupted, as the mob was waiting for his daily arrivals to throw spit, rocks and rotten tomatoes at him. In the courthouse, all defense witnesses were forbidden from making any reference to Dreyfus, as irrelevant to the present case: Zola was easily found guilty. He appealed his sentence, but lost again with a stiff penalty: one year in jail and more than 15000 Francs in fines and damages. To avoid prison and continue his fight now backed by more and more supporters,  Zola left for London into exile as his wife was forced to auction off their estate in order to pay the court ordered cash compensation to the plaintiffs.  However, during the same trial, one bragging prosecution witness had foolishly revealed the existence of some new evidence: this eventually led to a reopening of the case of the obviously innocent Captain Dreyfus.  It took many years, in spite of the Military cover up, for the Truth to finally prevail and Dreyfus to be entirely cleared in 1906, thanks to the countless champions for his case. In the meantime, however, on September 29, 1902, Zola had died of carbon monoxide poisoning, following a probably criminal tampering of his chimney. At his funeral, fellow writer Anatole France, referring to the novelist's courageous involvement in the Dreyfus Case, concluded that he had been "a moment in the conscience of Man".  The amount of iconographic propaganda from both sides of the political spectrum was enormous, as demonstrated, for instance, by the exhibit in 1987 at the Jewish Museum in New York. Indeed, the visual impact was part of the warfare in this very inflammatory issue in which all systems and values of the ever antagonistic French society would soon confront one another: anti-Semitism was challenged by human rights activism, chauvinistic nationalism clashed with anti-militarism, and self-serving individual interests were resisted by the universalist ideals of the "mission civilisatrice de la France". The very status, as well as the interactions, of the Church, the Military, the Legislative, the Executive and the Juridical, the issues of anti-Republicanism, anti-Clericalism, anti-Parliamentarism, the involvement of artists into political causes, all these would be ultimately questioned and reshaped forever after this dividing baptism of fire. Indeed, following the Dreyfus Case, among other things, the French Jews would not be the same, nor would the French Catholics, nor the French Protestants for that matter,  Ultimately, the Dreyfus Case had notable and long term consequences for French society and politics. The previously precarious Third Republic system survived the crisis and would be definitely strenghtened from then on. And, as the Press would be the watch-dog of public opinion, the Judiciary had to establish more rigorous standards, independent of political influence. The blemished dignity of the Military was restored from within its own ranks, thanks to officers like Picquart; but, although subdued in its privileged status, it evolved to become the highly popular republican army which fought WWI. Because of the tensions created by the Dreyfus Case, the Church and the State were consequently drastically separated. The distinction of Right and Left became sharper in the French party  system: the French Socialist for instance realized that the road to democracy was a parliamentarian and not a revolutionary one; organized Monarchism and anti -Semitism would associate under the proto-fascist Action Francaise movement, which would later foster the Vichy regime.  But, the Dreyfus Case is more than the heart-rending story of an innocent man maligned and subsequently vindicated. One should not dwell only on this example among many of despicable injustice and fanaticism . It was, on the contrary, one of the proudest moment in the conscience of Man, when many outraged people of all origins stood up against inequity. For, in spite of the cover-ups and propaganda, Truth and Justice ultimately prevailed and anti-Semitism was successfully exposed and momentarily defeated. To this day, the Ligue pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme, founded during Zola's trial in February 1898, and its legacy of various Human Rights movements around the world have remained as the defenders against manipulation, intimidation, prejudice and intolerance...from the Georgetown project on Emile Zola and the Dreyfus Case

And from Time Magazine on September 25, 1995 

A CENTURY LATE, THE TRUTH ARRIVES: 
THE FRENCH ARMY CONCEDES THAT ALFRED DREYFUS WAS INNOCENT 
by FREDERICK PAINTON 

In sometimes surprising ways, the long reach of France’s history still intrudes on the nation’s conscience. How else to explain the scene on Sept. 7 when 1,700 people, invited by France’s Central Consistory of Jews, turned out to hear General Jean-Louis Mourrut, head of the army’s historical service. The subject was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who 101 years ago was sentenced by a military court to life imprisonment on notorious Devil’s Island on trumped-up charges that he was a spy for the Germans. Mourrut’s mission on this occasion was to acknowledge more than a century later, and for the first time publicly, that the French army had been wrong. 

Perhaps only in France would such a belated admission by such a deeply conservative institution as the army still ring with meaning. For Jean Kahn, president of the Central Consistory of Jews, Mourrut’s words were considered a significant event: “The general said things before us that never had been said by a military man,” said Kahn. “That is, indisputably, progress.” Less impressed, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé sarcastically wrote, “The army got it! Incredible! Dreyfuswas innocent!” 

It was not quite an apology, but much more than a historical note. The Dreyfus case unleashed a political storm at the time. It sundered the French between such “Dreyfusards” as the crusading writer Emile Zola who saw the young Captain as the innocent victim of an anti-Semitic officer corps and traditionalists who regarded any attack on the army as unpatriotic. In fact, for some anti-Semitic groups, Dreyfus symbolized the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.  Nearly 12 years passed before Dreyfus’ conviction was reversed. Despite what he had endured, the stoic captain never lost faith and returned to the army: he was promoted to the rank of major and given the Legion of Honor.   Still, like other great divisions among the French, the Dreyfus case lives on because it remains viscerally political.  Among the anti-Dreyfusards were conservatives still opposed to the outcome of the French Revolution. Dreyfusards saw in the case a major issue, individual rights, trampled in the name of national security. Until Mourrut spoke, the army had appeared to assume Dreyfus was not innocent. 

Mourrut’s appearance, in fact, was prompted by an article in the army historical journal last year that questioned Dreyfus’ innocence, suggesting it was merely “the thesis generally accepted by historians.” Such was the outcry in the French Jewish community that Mourrut’s predecessor in charge of the history division was fired. Under Defense Minister Charles Millon, Mourrut quietly made amends, telling his audience that far from feeling nostalgia for the past, “the army is fighting for the values of our times—the values of truth, liberty and justice.” The French never lack for new quarrels, but they never quite forget the old ones.