We are familiar by now with an almost ritualistic pattern that accompanies certain kinds of court cases, in which arguments over guilt and innocence are accompanied by charged confrontations about the powers of the state. Accusations that civil liberties are being abused might be countered by claims of national security; assertions of conspiracies or prejudice might be answered by invocations of privileged knowledge; and established authorities might be either distrusted or embraced.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Émile Zola's defense of Alfred Dreyfus is at the Yeshiva University Museum.
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Slide Show
Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for Justice
So it may be difficult to grasp fully the immense importance the Dreyfus Affair had in shaping such views, and the kind of cataclysm it represented both in late-19th-century France and in the century to follow. A new exhibition, “Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for Justice,” at the Yeshiva University Museum, won't fully explain the Affair — and, indeed, the show is flawed by a lack of an explanatory narrative and by much untranslated French in handwritten documents. Perhaps the facts were considered so familiar that they didn't need to be put in context, as was probably the case when the exhibition was unveiled in Paris at the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in 2006.
But that said, if you come here with some background — from, for example, Michael Burns's brief documentary history, “France and the Dreyfus Affair,” or the more epic account by Jean-Denis Bredin, “The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus” — the 200-some objects fairly hum with importance and emotional weight. Unusual artifacts from the Dreyfus family collection also shed light on the strangeness and shock of Dreyfus's personal experience.
The Affair begins with seemingly simple facts. In 1894, when France's 1870 defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War still rankled, a document was discovered showing that a highly placed French officer had been passing military secrets to the Germans. The traitor was identified as Alfred Dreyfus. He was convicted, using the testimony of handwriting experts, along with assertions by military officers who boasted confidential proof. He was publicly stripped of his military ribbons, his sword was broken in two, and he was exiled to the rocky hell of Devil's Island.
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