France remembers 'old demons' of antisemitism on first annual Dreyfus day

Sunday saw France observe its first annual day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of treason in one of the country's most notorious cases of antisemitism. With reports of hate speech on the rise, President Emmanuel Macron said France had yet to shed its "old demons" of prejudice.

Issued on: 12/07/2026 - 14:44

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It fell on the 120th anniversary of France's highest appeals court recognising Dreyfus's innocence on 12 July 1906.

Macron declared the date a national day of commemoration last year in honour of "the victory of justice and the truth against hatred and antisemitism".

He led a ceremony near the courthouse in Paris on Sunday that was also attended by Dreyfus's grandson Charles, aged 99 and one of the few people still living who knew the officer personally.

Macron said the commemorations would also honour those who came to Dreyfus's defence. Their quest for the truth "reminds us that antisemitism, whatever its roots or supposed explanations, is the enemy of the Republic", he said in his speech.

"Yet we know that the old demons of antisemitism have never completely disappeared from our country. We know this because antisemitic acts, far from dying out, continue to target people simply because of who they are."

France – home to the largest Jewish population in the EU – has seen reports of antisemitism soar following the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza.

According to figures from the French Interior Ministry, more than half of anti-religious acts reported in 2025 targeted Jews.

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National scandal

In 1894 Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain from Alsace, was accused of passing military secrets to Germany.

Vilified by France's antisemitic press, he was convicted on flimsy evidence and sentenced to life on a penal colony off the coast of French Guiana.

As his family protested his innocence and more evidence came to light implicating another officer, a growing number of public figures came to his defence – notably writer Émile Zola, who in 1898 penned an open letter accusing the French military and government of a deliberate miscarriage of justice.

Public outrage grew and the "Dreyfus Affair" split the country into Dreyfusards, who demanded his exoneration in the name of justice, and anti-Dreyfusards who refused to question military authority.

Dreyfus was pardoned in 1899 and finally exonerated in 1906. He was reinstated to the army and later served in the First World War.

He died on 12 July 1935 at the age of 75 – 29 years to the day after his name was cleared.

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Symbolic statue

A statue of Dreyfus – holding a symbolically broken sword upright in salute – was also unveiled in front of the Court of Cassation on Île de la Cité on Sunday.

The French state has made other gestures to correct the historic injustice, including posthumously promoting Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general in November 2025.

In 2021, Macron inaugurated France's first museum dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair and institutional discrimination more broadly, housed in Zola's house in Médan to the west of Paris.

While historians and others have called for Dreyfus to be admitted to the Pantheon, France's monument to national heroes, no president has yet granted that honour.

In Sunday's speech, Macron also called for the names of the Righteous Among the Nations – the title given by Israel to non-Jews who sought to protect Jews from the Nazis – to be displayed "on every house, every building, every place where Jews were sheltered, taken in or saved" in France.