Alfred Dreyfus

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus, Maurice Samuels provides readers with an entirely new insight into Dreyfus himself—from the point of view of the man at the centre of the affair. He narrates the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his promising career as an officer, his being falsely accused and imprisoned for selling secrets to Germany, the pardon he was eventually granted, and his life of obscurity after World War I.

Samuels’s striking perspective is enriched by a newly available archive of more than three thousand documents and objects donated by the Dreyfus family. Samuels argues, unlike other historians, that Dreyfus was far from an “assimilated” Jew. Rather, he epitomised a new model of Jewish identity made possible by the French Revolution, when France became the first European nation to grant Jews full legal equality.

This book analyses Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and antisemitism over the course of his life—a story that, as global antisemitism rises, echoes still. It also shows the profound effect of the Dreyfus Affair on the lives of Jews around the world.