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120-602: The goal of the CDJC was to conduct research, publish documentation, pursue Nazi war criminals , seek restitution for victims of the Nazis, and to maintain a large archive of Holocaust materials, especially those concerning events affecting French Jewry . Part of the efforts of the CDJC include providing educational materials to students and teachers, guided museum visits and field trips, participation in international conferences, activities and commemorations, maintaining monuments and sites like

240-588: A 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent , was wrongfully convicted of treason for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent overseas to the penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana , where he spent the following five years imprisoned in very harsh conditions. In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through

360-527: A belief; it is the irresistible cavalier conviction which distorts the facts and beliefs. To condemn Dreyfus, the writing on the bordereau had to be compared to that of the Captain. There was nobody competent to analyse the writing on the General Staff. Then Major du Paty de Clam entered the scene: an eccentric man who prided himself on being an expert in graphology . On being shown some letters by Dreyfus and

480-414: A cell awaiting transfer. On 17 January 1895, he was transferred to the prison on Île de Ré where he was held for over a month. He had the right to see his wife twice a week in a long room, each of them at one end, with the director of the prison in the middle. At the last minute, at the initiative of General Mercier, a law was passed on 9 February 1895, restoring the Îles du Salut in French Guiana , as

600-585: A certain indifference to social issues, a willingness to break international isolation, the Russian alliance, and development of the colonial empire. These centrist policies resulted in cabinet instability, with some Republican members of the government sometimes aligning with the radicals and some Orléanists aligning with the Legitimists in five successive governments from 1893 to 1896. This instability coincided with an equally unstable presidency: President Sadi Carnot

720-426: A dozen defense witnesses. Finally, the absence of motive for the crime was a serious thorn in the prosecution case. Dreyfus was indeed a very patriotic officer highly rated by his superiors, very rich and with no tangible reason to betray France. The fact of Dreyfus's Jewishness, which was used extensively by the right-wing press, was not openly presented in court. Alphonse Bertillon , an eccentric criminologist who

840-456: A foreign power, to the maximum penalty under section 76 of the Criminal Code: permanent exile in a walled fortification ( prison ), the cancellation of his army rank and military degradation, also known as cashiering . Dreyfus was not sentenced to death , as it had been abolished for political crimes since 1848 . For the authorities, the press and the public, doubts had been dispelled by

960-518: A government's actions against its own nationals (such as Nazi Germany's persecution of German Jews). And at the Nuremberg war crimes trials , the tribunals rebuffed several efforts by the prosecution to bring such "domestic" atrocities within the scope of international law as "crimes against humanity." In addition, more than 90 villages and towns are recorded from the Hellenic network of martyr cities. During

1080-618: A hurricane and sparked the "Paxtonian revolution", as it was known in France, in Vichy historiography. Attacked vehemently at first by French historians and others, he ended up being awarded the Legion of Honor in 2009. Before 1982, only one conference was held in France on the subject of the Holocaust, and it was one organized in 1947 by the CDJC. Schneersohn wanted to make Paris the primary world center for

1200-407: A place of fortified deportation so that Dreyfus was not sent to Ducos, New Caledonia . Indeed, during the deportation of Adjutant Lucien Châtelain, sentenced for conspiring with the enemy in 1888, the facilities did not provide the required conditions of confinement and detention conditions were considered too soft. On 21 February 1895, Dreyfus embarked on the ship Ville de Saint-Nazaire. The next day

1320-514: A similar comment. On 5 January 1895, the ceremony of degradation took place in the Morlan Court of the Military School in Paris. While the drums rolled, Dreyfus was accompanied by four artillery officers, who brought him before an officer of the state who read the judgment. A Republican Guard adjutant tore off his badges, thin strips of gold, his stripes, cuffs and sleeves of his jacket. As he

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1440-450: A spy. Some of these forgeries referred to the real affair between the two officers; in one, Alessandro supposedly informed his lover that if "Dreyfus is brought in for questioning", they must both claim that they "never had any dealings with that Jew. ... Clearly, no one can ever know what happened with him." The letters, real and fake, provided a convenient excuse for placing the entire Dreyfus dossier under seal, given that exposure of

1560-492: A vengeful spirit remained. The military required considerable resources to prepare for the next conflict, and it was in this spirit that the Franco-Russian Alliance of 27 August 1892 was signed, although some opponents thought it "against nature". The army had recovered from the defeat, but many of its officers were aristocrats and monarchists. Cult of the flag and contempt for the parliamentary republic prevailed in

1680-519: Is the Holocaust , in which millions of European Jewish , Polish , and Romani people were systematically abused, deported, and murdered. Millions of civilians and prisoners of war also died as a result of German abuses, mistreatment, and deliberate starvation policies in those two conflicts. Much of the evidence was deliberately destroyed by the perpetrators, such as in Sonderaktion 1005 , in an attempt to conceal their crimes. Considered to have been

1800-594: Is necessary to avoid a casus belli "; while for Judet in Le Petit Journal of 18 December: "the closed court is our impregnable refuge against Germany"; or in La Croix the same day: it must be "the most absolute closed court". The trial opened on 19 December 1894 at one o'clock and a closed court was immediately pronounced. This closed court was not legally consistent since Major Picquart and Prefect Louis Lépine were present at certain proceedings in violation of

1920-540: The 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare , which explicitly forbade the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare. A minimum of 1325 civilians were injured (with at least a hundred killed) due to careless deployment of German gas weapons, particularly mustard gas . In August 1914, as part of the Schlieffen Plan , the German Army invaded and occupied

2040-621: The Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah . The memorial was billed as an adjunct to the one in Paris, and a way to introduce the public to the former internment camp there—a place of history, and of remembrance. The Shoah Memorial was inaugurated September 21, 2012 at Drancy by François Hollande , President of the Republic. The Center has a large library and has published many documents, including some from

2160-657: The French Gestapo , the German Embassy in Paris, the German Supreme Military Command in France, and the French General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ). The original holdings stemmed from a huge collection of documents and photos received from the Allies after Nuremberg. A selection of some individual documents and publications of historical interest include: Selected chronology related to

2280-584: The French Ministry of Defence . Recent research indicates the existence of numbering which suggests the presence of a dozen documents. Among these letters were some of an erotic homosexual nature (the Davignon letter among others) raising the question of the tainted methods of the Statistics Section and the objective of their choice of documents. The secret file was illegally submitted at the beginning of

2400-561: The Mémorial de la Shoah and the monument at Drancy , and most importantly collecting and disseminating documentation about the Holocaust in their extensive archives. While the Second World War was still underway, the Nazis had already formed a contingency plan that in case of defeat they would carry out the total destruction of German records of the extermination of millions of victims, per Heinrich Himmler 's statement to SS officials that

2520-609: The Namib Desert . Some sources also claim that the German colonial army systematically poisoned wells in the desert . Documentation regarding German war crimes in World War I was seized and destroyed by Nazi Germany during World War II, after occupying France , along with monuments commemorating their victims. Poison gas was first introduced as a weapon by Imperial Germany, and subsequently used by all major belligerents, in violation of

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2640-512: The Prefecture of Police destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation. France's Jewish population before the war was around 300,000, of which 75,721 were deported, with only 2500 surviving. Political deportees fared better, with 37,000 returning. By the 1950s, the Jewish population was half what it was before the war, most of them from Eastern Europe. In the aftermath of

2760-523: The United States , the practice was withdrawn. However, Germany resumed the practice on 1 February 1917 and declared that all merchant ships regardless of nationalities would be sunk without warning. This outraged the U.S. public, prompting the U.S. to break diplomatic relations with Germany two days later, and, along with the Zimmermann Telegram , led the U.S. entry into the war two months later on

2880-509: The anarchist threat (reduced by the " villainous laws " of July 1894). The elections of 1893 were focused on the "social question" and resulted in a Republican victory (just under half the seats) against the conservative right, and the reinforcement of the Radicals (about 150 seats) and Socialists (about 50 seats). The opposition of the Radicals and Socialists resulted in a centrist government with policies oriented towards economic protectionism,

3000-549: The "Scoundrel D ...". It was a letter from the German military attaché, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen , to the Italian military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Alessandro Panizzardi, intercepted by the SR. The letter was supposed to accuse Dreyfus definitively since, according to his accusers, it was signed with the initial of his name. In reality, the Statistics Section knew that the letter could not be attributed to Dreyfus and if it was, it

3120-557: The "anti-Dreyfusards" such as Édouard Drumont , the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole . The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was pardoned and released. In 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated . After being reinstated as a major in the French Army, he served during the whole of World War I , ending his service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in 1935. The Dreyfus affair came to symbolise modern injustice in

3240-444: The 1880s Schwartzkoppen had begun an affair with an Italian military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Count Alessandro Panizzardi . While neither had anything to do with Dreyfus, their intimate and erotic correspondence (e.g. "Don't exhaust yourself with too much buggery."), which was obtained by the authorities, lent an air of truth to other documents that were forged by prosecutors to lend retroactive credibility to Dreyfus's conviction as

3360-410: The 1907 Hague Convention which prohibited naval bombardments of undefended towns without warning, because only Hartlepool was protected by shore batteries . Germany was a signatory of the 1907 Hague Convention. Another attack followed on 26 April 1916 on the coastal towns of Yarmouth and Lowestoft but both were important naval bases and defended by shore batteries. Unrestricted submarine warfare

3480-526: The 1970s, almost all Holocaust studies emanating from France came from the CDJC and its historians, and no serious works appeared from French universities or other historical scholarship from within France. When serious studies finally did come out in the 1970s and 1980s outside the CDJC, they came from abroad, including the United States, Canada, and Germany, such as Robert Paxton's seminal Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 which hit France like

3600-452: The Barbie telegram in his summation to the jury at Nuremberg but without naming him as he was not on trial there, but merely as a way of describing the routine, administrative nature of the killing that was carried out by the Nazis. It wasn't until the Barbie trial, that his name was linked to the telegram. Barbie was sentenced to a life term, and died of natural causes in prison in 1991. Until

3720-654: The CDJC and the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr merged, and was renamed the Mémorial de la Shoah ; the new entity opened its doors on January 27, 2005. During the Occupation 90% of Jews and others deported to the concentration camps passed through the Drancy internment camp . From 1942 to 1944, about 63,000 Jews were interned here and sent east. Land for a memorial at Drancy was donated by Drancy City Hall, and funded by

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3840-638: The CDJC is to bring perpetrators of war crimes to justice. CDJC played a role at Nuremberg, and has participated in several high-profile and numerous other actions. The most well known cases are those of Adolf Eichmann, Klaus Barbie, and Maurice Papon . The Nuremberg trials began in November 1945. Schneerson sent Léon Poliakov who had recently joined CJDC as a historian to Nuremberg as an expert researcher, along with an assistant, Joseph Billig. They founded Jewish World War II historiography alone with no training. Many documents in evidence at Nuremberg ended up in

3960-614: The Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation or in the context of current events: Nazi war crimes Until 1945 until 1945 The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler ) ordered, organized, and condoned a substantial number of war crimes , first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notable of these

4080-444: The Center, and became the kernel of their photo and document archives. These, in turn, were used in France in the post-war years in many war crime trials, such as those of Klaus Barbie , Maurice Papon and others. The Center was also responsible for bringing a key document to light, the original order for the 1944 roundup of Jewish refugee children of Izieu who were later deported to Auschwitz and murdered upon arrival. Contrary to

4200-620: The Dreyfus affair. Lenepveu caricatured "prominent Jews, Dreyfus supporters, and Republican statesman". No. 35 Amnistie populaire depicts the corpse of Dreyfus himself as it dangles from a noose. Large noses, money, and Lenepveu's general tendency to illustrate subjects with bodies of animals likely contributed to the dissemination of antisemitism in French popular culture. The staff of the Military Intelligence Service (SR) worked around

4320-475: The Francophone world; it remains one of the most notable examples of a miscarriage of justice and of antisemitism . The affair divided France into pro-republican, anticlerical Dreyfusards and pro-Army, mostly Catholic anti-Dreyfusards, embittering French politics and encouraging radicalisation. The press played a crucial role in exposing information and in shaping and expressing public opinion on both sides of

4440-586: The French Minister of Information for permission to publish, under the new name Revue du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Journal of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation). This, in turn, officially changed its name to Le Monde Juif (Jewish World) in July 1946, and was published as a monthly, 24-page magazine with about 1500 charter subscribers. Its first issue was published in August 1946. In 1995, it

4560-483: The French were either blameless victims or members of, or helping the Resistance. Vichy was considered an unpleasant aberration, and the general feeling was to avoid discussion about it so as to avoid poking old wounds. The three-volume Le commissariat General aux Question Juives by Joseph Billig published in 3 volumes in 1955-60 showed that the French response to roundups of Jews when they were not actively profiting from

4680-445: The General Staff still had a card in hand to tip the balance decisively against Dreyfus. Military witnesses at the trial alerted high command about the risk of acquittal. For this eventuality the Statistics Section had prepared a file containing, in principle, four "absolute" proofs of the guilt of Captain Dreyfus accompanied by an explanatory note. The contents of this secret file remained uncertain until 2013, when they were released by

4800-484: The General Staff to prepare public opinion and to put indirect pressure on the judges. On 8 November 1894, General Mercier declared Dreyfus guilty in an interview with Le Figaro . He repeated himself on 29 November 1894 in an article by Arthur Meyer in Le Gaulois , which in fact condemned the indictment against Dreyfus and asked, "How much freedom will the military court have to judge the defendant?" The jousting of

4920-488: The Germans. This was especially critical since several cases of espionage had already been featured in the headlines of newspapers, which were fond of sensationalism . In 1890, the archivist Boutonnet was convicted for selling plans of shells that used melinite . The German military attaché in Paris in 1894 was Count Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen , who developed a policy of infiltration that appears to have been effective. In

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5040-583: The Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke , where most of them died of thirst. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans only to suffer a similar fate. In total, from 24,000 up to 100,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died. The genocide was characterized by widespread death by starvation and thirst because the Herero who fled the violence were prevented from returning from

5160-398: The Holocaust. As a result of all the coverage, it sparked interest in wartime events, which ultimately resulted in an increase in coverage of the war in public school education, publication of memoirs as well as academic studies which helped promote public awareness of the Holocaust. Eichmann was sentenced to capital punishment, and the sentence was carried out on 1 April 1962. Klaus Barbie

5280-451: The Jewish presence in France. Jews in metropolitan France in 1895 numbered about 80,000 (40,000 in Paris alone), who were highly integrated into society; an additional 45,000 Jews lived in Algeria . The launch of La Libre Parole with a circulation estimated at 200,000 copies in 1892, allowed Drumont to expand his audience to a popular readership already enticed by the boulangiste adventure in

5400-664: The Klarsfelds ( Serge and Beate Klarsfeld ) living in Bolivia in 1971, Barbie was eventually extradited and returned to France in 1983. He faced trial 11 May 1987 in Lyon before the Cour d'assises . As in the case of the Eichmann trial, the court recognized the great historical importance of the trial, and very exceptionally allowed it to be filmed. The CDJC was in possession of a key document relating to

5520-537: The Meuse conducted by an officer whom the Germans and Italians nicknamed Dubois. This is what led to the origins of the Dreyfus affair. The social context was marked by the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of Jewish France by Édouard Drumont in 1886 (150,000 copies in the first year), went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism . Tensions were high in all strata of society, fueled by an influential press, which

5640-488: The Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier . In fact the SR suspected that there had been leaks since the beginning of 1894 and had been trying to find the perpetrator. The minister had been harshly attacked in the press for his actions, which were deemed incompetent, and appears to have sought an opportunity to enhance his image. He immediately initiated two secret investigations, one administrative and one judicial. To find

5760-493: The [1948] Genocide Convention added virtually nothing to what was already covered (and had been since the Hague Convention of 1899) by the internationally accepted laws of land warfare, which require an occupying power to respect "family honors and rights, individual lives and private property, as well as religious convictions and liberty" of the enemy nationals. But the laws of war do not cover, in time of either war or peace,

5880-474: The affair was revealed in an article in La Libre Parole , the antisemitic newspaper owned by Édouard Drumont . This marked the beginning of a very brutal press campaign until the trial. This event put the affair in the field of antisemitism where it remained until its conclusion. On 1 November 1894, Alfred's brother, Mathieu Dreyfus, became aware of the arrest after being called urgently to Paris. He became

6000-501: The architect of the arduous fight for the liberation of his brother. Without hesitation, he began looking for a lawyer, and retained the distinguished criminal lawyer Edgar Demange . On 3 November 1894, General Saussier, the Military governor of Paris , reluctantly gave the order for an enquiry. He had the power to stop the process but did not, perhaps because of an exaggerated confidence in military justice. Major Besson d'Ormescheville,

6120-434: The army. The Republic celebrated its army; the army ignored the Republic. Over the previous ten years the army had undergone a significant shift resulting from its twofold aim to democratize and modernize. The graduates of the École Polytechnique now competed effectively with officers from the main career path of Saint-Cyr , which caused strife, bitterness, and jealousy among junior officers expecting promotions. The period

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6240-409: The arrest of her husband secret and even said, "One word, one single word and it will be a European war!" Illegally, Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement in prison, where Du Paty interrogated him day and night in order to obtain a confession, which failed. The captain was morally supported by the first Dreyfusard, Major Forzinetti, commandant of the military prisons of Paris. On 29 October 1894,

6360-505: The attention of the world. The Barbie trial in Lyon in 1987 once again brought the history of World War II onto the front pages of newspapers and public awareness, and again the proceedings were filmed, due to their exceptional historical importance. In both cases, the archives maintained by the CDJC played a role. The trial of Adolf Eichmann for crimes against humanity began in Jerusalem on 11 April 1961. The Israeli government arranged for

6480-453: The beginning of the case, the emphasis was rather on the Alsatian origins of Dreyfus than on his religion. These origins were not, however, exceptional because these officers were favoured by France for their knowledge of the German language and culture. There was also antisemitism in the offices of the General Staff, and it fast became central to the affair by filling in the credibility gaps in

6600-404: The bordereau on 5 October, du Paty concluded immediately who had written the two writings. After a day of additional work he provided a report that, despite some differences, the similarities were sufficient to warrant an investigation. Dreyfus was therefore "the probable author" of the bordereau in the eyes of the General Staff. General Mercier believed he had the guilty party, but he exaggerated

6720-468: The center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation ( Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine , CDJC). Its stated goal was to document the persecution and martyrdom of French Jewry by collecting massive amounts of documentation, to study discriminatory laws, to support attempts at recovery of confiscated Jewish property, to document the suffering as well as

6840-415: The clock to spy on the German Embassy in Paris. They had managed to get a French housekeeper named "Madame Bastian" hired to work in the building and spy on the Germans. In September 1894, she found a torn-up note which she handed over to her employers at the Military Intelligence Service. This note later became known as "the bordereau". This piece of paper, torn into six large pieces, unsigned and undated,

6960-517: The columnists took place within a broader debate about the issue of a closed court. For Ranc and Cassagnac, who represented the majority of the press, the closed court was a low manoeuvre to enable the acquittal of Dreyfus, "because the minister is a coward". The proof was "that he grovels before the Prussians" by agreeing to publish the denials of the German ambassador in Paris. In other newspapers, such as L'Éclair on 13 December 1894: "the closed court

7080-542: The confession" took place before the degradation. In the van that brought him to the military school, Dreyfus is said to have confided his treachery to Captain Lebrun-Renault. It appears that this was merely self-promotion by the captain of the Republican Guard, and that in reality Dreyfus had made no admission. Due to the affair's being related to national security, the prisoner was then held in solitary confinement in

7200-489: The confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a whole was relatively open to individual talent. At the time of the Dreyfus affair there were an estimated 300 Jewish officers in the army (about 3 per cent of the total), of whom ten were generals. The popularity of the duel using sword or small pistol, sometimes causing death, bore witness to the tensions of the period. When a series of press articles in La Libre Parole accused Jewish officers of "betraying their birth",

7320-578: The conflict. In 1894, the Third Republic was twenty-four years old. Although the 16 May Crisis in 1877 had crippled the political influence of both the Bourbon and Orléanist royalists , its ministries continued to be short-lived as the country lurched from crisis to crisis: three years immediately preceding the Dreyfus affair were the near-coup of Georges Boulanger in 1889, the Panama scandals in 1892, and

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7440-417: The country's preeminent university. The Germans explained these acts as being in retaliation for Belgian guerrilla warfare, (see francs-tireurs ). This action was in violation of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare provisions that prohibited collective punishment of civilians and looting and destruction of civilian property in occupied territories . Additional acts of oppression took place throughout

7560-452: The court. Dreyfus was apoplectic with rage and demanded to be confronted with his anonymous accuser, which was rejected by the General Staff. The incident had an undeniable effect on the court, which was composed of seven officers who were both judges and jury. However, the outcome of the trial remained uncertain. The conviction of the judges had been shaken by the firm and logical answers of the accused. The judges took leave to deliberate, but

7680-483: The culprit, using simple though crude reasoning, the circle of the search was arbitrarily restricted to suspects posted to, or former employees of, the General Staff – necessarily a trainee artillery officer. The ideal culprit was identified: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of the École polytechnique and an artillery officer, of the Jewish faith and of Alsatian origin, coming from the republican meritocracy. At

7800-560: The deliberations by the President of the Military Court, Colonel Émilien Maurel, by order of the Minister of War, General Mercier. Later at the Rennes trial of 1899, General Mercier explained (falsely) the nature of the prohibited disclosure of the documents submitted in the courtroom. This file contained, in addition to letters without much interest, some of which were falsified, a piece known as

7920-466: The deportation of the children from Izieu, and provided a copy to the French courts, which enabled the prosecution of Barbie for Crimes against Humanity. Barbie had been tried in absentia in 1952 and 1954, and French law prohibits double jeopardy. But the charges did not include events at Izieu, and so it was this charge, backed by the evidence provided by the telegram supplied by the CDJC, which enabled his prosecution and conviction. Faure had actually read

8040-594: The first genocide of the 20th century, the Herero and Namaqua genocide was perpetrated by the German Empire between 1904 and 1907 in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia ), during the Scramble for Africa . On January 12, 1904, the Herero people , led by Samuel Maharero , rebelled against German colonialism . In August, General Lothar von Trotha of the Imperial German Army defeated

8160-511: The first major work on the genocide, first began to reach a wider audience and receive some good reviews in opposition to the prevailing opinion in studies at the time that a major genocide of six million Jews was logistically impossible and thus could not have happened. Most CDJC publications were not in bookstores and were not widely available. There was little public interest in the Holocaust, and financial returns were minimal. Reaction to early CJDC publications in early postwar France During

8280-524: The first period until 1955, most publications depended on German archives to document anti-Jewish persecution in France going back to the Dreyfus period, and served both Vichy and the Nazis . However any indication in new scholarship that attempted to pin any amount of culpability on the French ran counter to public feeling in France at the time, which was that the Germans were responsible for all persecution and that

8400-413: The heroism of the Jews, and to record the attitude of governments, administrations, and various sectors of public opinion. Early efforts received little recognition for a number of reasons. One was that these were grassroots movements to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, much of it by people who were not part of academia or trained as historians and thus looked down on by professionals. Another reason

8520-449: The history of the Final Solution would be "a glorious page that will never be written". They largely succeeded in this attempt. In France, the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before the war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at Liberation ,

8640-472: The indictment led to Émile Zola calling it a "monument of bias". After the news broke on Dreyfus' arrest, many journalists flocked to the story and flooded the story with speculations and accusations. The renowned journalist and antisemitic agitator Edouard Drumont wrote in his publication on November 3, 1894, "What a terrible lesson, this disgraceful treason of the Jew Dreyfus." On 4 December 1894, Dreyfus

8760-532: The investigations of Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart , head of counter-espionage—which identified the real culprit as a French Army Major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy . High-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, and a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, writer Émile Zola 's open letter J'Accuse...! in

8880-404: The judges. In addition, Major Hubert-Joseph Henry , deputy head of the SR and discoverer of the bordereau , made a theatrical statement in open court. He argued that leaks betraying the General Staff had been suspected to exist since February 1894 and that "a respectable person" accused Captain Dreyfus. He swore on oath that the traitor was Dreyfus, pointing to the crucifix hanging on the wall of

9000-472: The law. The closed court allowed the military to avoid disclosing the emptiness of their evidence to the public and to stifle debate. As expected, the emptiness of their case appeared clearly during the hearings. Detailed discussions on the bordereau showed that Captain Dreyfus could not be the author. At the same time the accused himself protested his innocence and defended himself point by point with energy and logic. Moreover, his statements were supported by

9120-413: The liaison would have 'dishonoured' Germany and Italy's military and compromised diplomatic relations. As homosexuality was, like Judaism, then often perceived as a sign of national degeneration, recent historians have suggested that combining them to inflate the scandal may have shaped the prosecution strategy. Since early 1894, the Statistics Section had investigated traffic in master plans for Nice and

9240-686: The liberation in 1944, the CDJC moved to Paris. In 1956 it moved to the Marais, the Jewish district of Paris in the 4th arrondissement, sharing space in the building containing the memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr. Renovations were undertaken in 2004 to handle expansion and to be able to host conferences and have exhibition space. Early publications in the 1940s had limited exposure, such as Les Juifs sous l'Occupation: Recueil de textes francais et allemands 1940-1944 and La Condition des Juifs sous l'occupation allemande 1940-44 . Starting in 1951, works such as Poliakov's Bréviaire de la haine (Harvest of Hate),

9360-531: The memory of the genocide, but Zionists had other ideas and ultimately Schneersohn agreed in 1953 to a division of responsibilities with the Yad Vashem memorial center in Israel with the latter holding most of the responsibilities. Part of the CDJC's mission is to establish and maintain monuments or memorials to promote the remembrance of the Holocaust. A tradition of honoring the unknown soldier existed in France since

9480-508: The military were crushed. Nevertheless Du Paty de Clam still arrested the captain, accused him of conspiring with the enemy, and told him that he would be brought before a court-martial. Dreyfus was imprisoned at the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris . Mrs. Dreyfus was informed of the arrest the same day by a police raid to search their apartment. She was terrorized by Du Paty, who ordered her to keep

9600-482: The ministry into proof of espionage. From the beginning a biased and one-sided multiplication of errors led the State to a false position. This was present throughout the affair, where irrationality prevailed over the positivism in vogue in that period: From this first hour the phenomenon occurred that will dominate the whole affair. It is no longer controlled by facts and circumstances carefully examined which will constitute

9720-566: The most notable war crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. Not all of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and similar mass atrocities were war crimes. Telford Taylor (The U.S. prosecutor in the German High Command case at the Nuremberg Trials and Chief Counsel for the twelve trials before the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals ) explained in 1982: as far as wartime actions against enemy nationals are concerned,

9840-504: The need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered 40 representatives from Jewish organizations together at his place at rue Bizanet in Grenoble which was under Italian occupation at the time in order to form a centre de documentation . Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation . Serious work began after

9960-451: The neutral nation of Belgium without explicit warning, which violated a treaty of 1839 that the German chancellor dismissed as a "scrap of paper" and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities . Within the first two months of the war, the German occupiers terrorized the Belgians, killing thousands of civilians and looting and burning scores of towns, including Leuven , which housed

10080-472: The newspaper L'Aurore stoked a growing movement of political support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus, the "Dreyfusards" such as Sarah Bernhardt , Anatole France , Charles Péguy , Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau ; and those who condemned him,

10200-576: The occupation, administered by the General Government of Belgium . The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, which took place on December 16, 1914, was an attack by the Imperial German Navy on the British seaport towns of Scarborough , Hartlepool , West Hartlepool , and Whitby . The attack resulted in 137 fatalities and 592 casualties. The raid was in violation of the ninth section of

10320-635: The officers challenged the editors. Captain Crémieu-Foa, a Jewish Alsatian graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, fought unsuccessfully against Drumont and against M. de Lamase, who was the author of the articles. Captain Mayer, another Jewish officer, was killed by the Marquis de Morès , a friend of Drumont, in another duel. Hatred of Jews was now public and violent, driven by a firebrand (Drumont) who demonized

10440-422: The opinion that there was no serious scholarship about the Holocaust before the early 1960s, the CDJC had been active going back to the 1940s and 50s, although their efforts were little noted even by historians and were almost totally unknown to the public. The Eichmann trial in 1961 changed all that, and the decision to televise it brought the trial and the history of the Holocaust into millions of homes and riveted

10560-501: The past. The antisemitism circulated by La Libre Parole , as well as by L'Éclair , Le Petit Journal , La Patrie , L'Intransigeant and La Croix , drew on antisemitic roots in certain Catholic circles. Publications remarking on the Dreyfus affair often reinforced antisemitic sentiments, language and imagery. The Musée des Horreurs  [ fr ] was a collection of anti-Dreyfus posters illustrated by Victor Lenepveu during

10680-520: The personality of Dreyfus, others to ensure the truth of the identity of the author of the bordereau. The expert Gobert was not convinced and found many differences. He even wrote that "the nature of the writing on the bordereau excludes disguised handwriting". Disappointed, Mercier then called in Alphonse Bertillon , the inventor of forensic anthropometry but no handwriting expert. He was initially no more positive than Gobert but he did not exclude

10800-405: The possibility of its being the writing of Dreyfus. Later, under pressure from the military, he argued that Dreyfus had autocopied it and developed his theory of "autoforgery". On 13 October 1894, without any tangible evidence and with an empty file, General Mercier summoned Captain Dreyfus for a general inspection in "bourgeois clothing", i.e. in civilian clothes. The purpose of the General Staff

10920-571: The post-World War I era. As a way of combatting forgetfulness of the genocide, Schneersohn added a Memorial Tomb to the CDJC Center which was inaugurated in October 1956. The Memorial of the Unknown Jewish martyr ( Mémorial du martyr juif inconnu ) was dedicated at the CDJC and became the central memorial and symbol of Jewish memory in France, serving as the venue for Holocaust commemorations. In 2005,

11040-415: The preliminary enquiry. In particular, Dreyfus was at that time the only Jewish officer to be recently passed by the General Staff. In fact, the reputation of Dreyfus as a cold and withdrawn or even haughty character, as well as his "curiosity", worked strongly against him. These traits of character, some false, others natural, made the charges plausible by turning the most ordinary acts of everyday life in

11160-453: The recorder for the Military Court, wrote an indictment in which "moral elements" of the charge (which gossiped about the habits of Dreyfus and his alleged attendance at "gambling circles", his knowledge of German, and his "remarkable memory") were developed more extensively than the "material elements", which are rarely seen in the charge: "This is a proof of guilt because Dreyfus made everything disappear". The complete lack of neutrality of

11280-431: The shock and trauma of the war, many Jews converted to Christianity, Frenchified their names, and the number of Jewish ceremonies performed (including circumcision which could identify males as Jewish) dropped precipitously. Many just wanted to forget, and disappear into French society; for most, gathering a history of the Holocaust was not a priority. It was in this context, that a very small number of Jews first took on

11400-660: The side of the Allied Powers . Chronologically, the first German World War II crime, and also the very first act of the war, was the bombing of Wieluń , a town where no targets of military value were present. More significantly, the Holocaust of the European Jews , the extermination of millions of Poles , the Action T4 killing of the disabled , and the Porajmos of the Romani are

11520-417: The sole repository and outlet for historiography on the Holocaust, and when for example Poliakov published outside the CDJC in 1951, they had a falling-out. However, the early efforts in collecting, documenting, and preserving the basic information laid the groundwork for all future Holocaust historiography. The Nuremberg trials presented the opportunity for its first public appearance on the world stage. After

11640-405: The spoils, was apathetic at best. The book was mostly ignored due to the prevailing feeling at the time but since has been considered a seminal work. Because of these factors and the general atmosphere at the time, the CDJC operated almost in an underground manner. Poliakov said in his Memoires that even the word genocide was considered unfit for publication in 1951 when his groundbreaking work

11760-446: The support of the right. He sought to appease religious, social, and economic tensions and conducted a fairly conservative policy. He succeeded in improving stability, and it was under this stable government that the Dreyfus affair occurred. The Dreyfus affair occurred in the context of German annexation of Alsace and Moselle , an event that fed the most extreme nationalism. The traumatic defeat of France in 1870 seemed far away, but

11880-409: The task of preserving the record of events in order that it not be lost to history. In France, this occurred first at Drancy where camp registers were carefully preserved and turned over to the new National Office for Veterans and Victims of War ; which however then held them in secret refusing to release copies even to the CDJC. Already before the end of the war, Isaac Schneersohn , anticipating

12000-621: The trial and his guilt was certain. Right and left regretted the abolition of the death penalty for such a crime. Antisemitism peaked in the press and occurred in areas so far spared. Socialist leader Jean Jaurès regretted the lightness of the sentence in an address to the Chamber of Deputies and wrote, "A soldier has been sentenced to death and executed for throwing a button in the face of his corporal. So why leave this miserable traitor alive?" Radical Republican Georges Clemenceau in La Justice made

12120-422: The trial to have prominent media coverage, and the worldwide press was there. CDJC science director Georges Wellers served as a witness in the Eichmann trial. One of the goals of the trial was to disseminate information about the Holocaust to the public, and for the great majority of people around the world watching or reading about it, the Eichmann trial was their first confrontation with anything having to do with

12240-650: The triple German, Italian and Bulgarian, occupation about 800,000 people lost their lives in Greece (see World War II casualties ). Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair ( French : affaire Dreyfus , pronounced [afɛːʁ dʁɛfys] ) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus ,

12360-429: The two months before the trial, the press went wild. La Libre Parole , L'Autorité , Le Journal , and Le Temps described the supposed life of Dreyfus through lies and bad fiction. This was also an opportunity for extreme headlines from La Libre Parole and La Croix to justify their previous campaigns against the presence of Jews in the army on the theme "You have been told!" This long delay above all enabled

12480-551: The value of the affair, which took on the status of an affair of state during the week preceding the arrest of Dreyfus. The Minister did consult and inform all the authorities of the State, yet despite prudent counsel and courageous objections expressed by Gabriel Hanotaux in the Council of Ministers he decided to pursue it. Du Paty de Clam was appointed Judicial Police Officer to lead an official investigation. Meanwhile, several parallel sources of information were opening up, some on

12600-481: Was a Gestapo member, known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally sadistically tortured French prisoners including men, women, and children, in Lyon , France. He was responsible for arresting French Resistance member Jean Moulin , and for signing the deportation order for the children from the orphanage at Izieu . He was wanted for crimes committed in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. After being tracked and discovered by

12720-471: Was a novelty as an organised activity by governments in the late 19th century. The Statistics Section was created in 1871 but consisted of only a handful of officers and civilians. Its head in 1894 was Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Sandherr , a graduate of Saint-Cyr , an Alsatian from Mulhouse , and a convinced antisemite. Its military mission was clear: to retrieve information about potential enemies of France and to feed them false information. The Statistics Section

12840-495: Was addressed to the German military attaché stationed at the German Embassy, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen . It stated that confidential French military documents regarding the newly developed "hydraulic brake of 120, and the way this gun has worked" were about to be sent to a foreign power. This catch seemed of sufficient importance for the head of the "Statistical Section", the Mulhousian Jean Sandherr , to inform

12960-405: Was also marked by an arms race that primarily affected artillery. There were improvements in heavy artillery (guns of 120 mm and 155 mm, Models 1890 Baquet , new hydropneumatic brakes), but also, and especially, development of the ultra-secret 75mm gun . The operation of military counterintelligence, alias the "Statistics Section" (SR), should be noted. Spying as a tool for secret war

13080-487: Was assassinated on 24 June 1894; his moderate successor Jean Casimir-Perier resigned several months later on 15 January 1895 and was replaced by Félix Faure . Following the failure of the radical government of Léon Bourgeois in 1896, the president appointed Jules Méline as prime minister. His government faced the opposition of the left and of some Republicans (including the Progressive Union) and made sure to keep

13200-606: Was first published. The CDJC began publishing a periodical bulletin in 1945 which continued appearing under various names, into the 21st century. It began in April 1945 as the Bulletin du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Bulletin of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) which printed eight issues through January 1946. These were not sold openly. It stopped publishing temporarily in September 1945, when Schneersohn applied to

13320-548: Was instituted in 1915 in response to the British naval blockade of Germany . Prize rules , which were codified under the 1907 Hague Convention—such as those that required commerce raiders to warn their targets and allow time for the crew to board lifeboats—were disregarded and commercial vessels were sunk regardless of nationality, cargo, or destination. Following the sinking of the RMS ; Lusitania on 7 May 1915 and subsequent public outcry in various neutral countries, including

13440-407: Was not an expert in handwriting, was presented as a scholar of the first importance. He advanced the theory of "autoforgery" during the trial and accused Dreyfus of imitating his own handwriting, explaining the differences in writing by using extracts of writing from his brother Matthieu and his wife Lucie. This theory, although later regarded as bizarre and astonishing, seems to have had some effect on

13560-509: Was paraded throughout the streets, the crowd chanted "Death to Judas, death to the Jew." Witnesses report the dignity of Dreyfus, who continued to maintain his innocence while raising his arms: "Innocent, Innocent! Vive la France! Long live the Army". The Adjutant broke his sword on his knee and then the condemned Dreyfus marched at a slow pace in front of his former companions. An event known as "the legend of

13680-405: Was referred to the first Military Court with this dossier. The secrecy was lifted and Demange could access the file for the first time. After reading it the lawyer had absolute confidence, as he saw the emptiness of the prosecution's case. The prosecution rested completely on the writing on a single piece of paper, the bordereau, on which experts disagreed, and on vague indirect testimonies. During

13800-567: Was renamed as Revue d'histoire de la Shoah – Le Monde Juif (Journal of the History of the Shoah–Jewish World) and finally ending up as the Revue d'histoire de la Shoah in 2005. The CDJC initials had disappeared from the cover and were incorporated instead as part of the new logo adopted by the Mémorial de la Shoah , Musée, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine. One of the core missions of

13920-514: Was supported by the "Secret Affairs" of the Quai d'Orsay at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was headed by a young diplomat, Maurice Paléologue . The arms race created an acute atmosphere of intrigue from 1890 in French counter-espionage . One of the missions of the section was to spy on the German Embassy at Rue de Lille in Paris to thwart any attempt by the French to transmit important information to

14040-480: Was that much of the early historiography focused on the perpetrators, with little effort aimed at documenting the experience of victims, which was relegated to the domain of "memory" rather than that of "history". In addition, early efforts consisted of collecting and publishing primary sources and survivor testimonies, and rarely on analysis and thematic interpretation of events which might have attracted more attention from academia. Finally, Schneersohn wanted CDJC to be

14160-461: Was to obtain the perfect proof under French law: a confession . That confession was to be obtained by surprise – by dictating a letter based on the bordereau to reveal his guilt. On the morning of 15 October 1894, Captain Dreyfus underwent this ordeal but admitted nothing. Du Paty even tried to suggest suicide by placing a revolver in front of Dreyfus, but he refused to take his life, saying he "wanted to live to establish his innocence". The hopes of

14280-531: Was virtually free to write and disseminate any information even if offensive or defamatory. Legal risks were limited if the target was a private person. Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practised hidden discrimination with the "cote d'amour" (a subjective assessment of personal acceptability) system of irrational grading, encountered by Dreyfus in his application to the Bourges School. However, while prejudices of this nature undoubtedly existed within

14400-425: Was with criminal intent. Colonel Maurel confirmed in the second Dreyfus trial that the secret documents were not used to win the support of the judges of the Military Court. He contradicted himself, however, by saying that he read only one document, "which was enough". On 22 December 1894, after several hours of deliberation, the verdict was reached. Seven judges unanimously convicted Alfred Dreyfus of collusion with

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