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Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair
An insightful new biography of the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair, focused on the man himself and based on newly accessible documents
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In this book, Maurice Samuels gives readers an entirely new insight into Dreyfus himself—from the point of view of the man at the center of the affair. He tells 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 epitomized 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 analyzes Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to 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.
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In this book, Maurice Samuels gives readers an entirely new insight into Dreyfus himself—from the point of view of the man at the center of the affair. He tells 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 epitomized 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 analyzes Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to 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.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 15, 2024
This story traces the history of antisemitism in Europe through the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus for espionage that was fabricated by a military trial. The outcome of this event was the rise of Zionism by Theodor Herzl who was living in Paris. The French antisemitism and deprivation during imprisonment was the prototype for Holocaust which began 40 years after the Dreyfus affair. This information is also addressed in Hannah Arendt’s Rise of Totalitarianism although Maurice Samuel’s well researched book does not agree with Arendt’s conclusions.
May 9, 2025
"To write a 'Jewish life' of Dreyfus is something of a provocation." Dreyfus was not an observant or particularly spiritual person, and the large worldwide effort organised on his behalf tended to avoid focusing on his Judaism, and make it instead a question of justice and human rights. However, this book takes it up, focusing on Dreyfus's own Jewish identity and the broader context of antisemitism in France and the affair's impact on Jewish history.
Dreyfus came from a family with lots of money and privilege. His income was far more than that of an average officer. This is part of the reason that his family was able to launch such a large and ultimately successful struggle to exonerate him. This was noted even by some Dreyfusards like W.E.B. DuBois, who saw this as a struggle for minority rights, but with a much higher profile than that of the countless black victims of lynching.
After being falsely accused of spying and a rushed, secret trial, he was judged guilty and exiled to Devil's Island, a prison even less pleasant than it sounds. Dreyfus was chained to his bed at night, developing bedsores and unable to move the insects that crawled over him. He wrote memoirs while there, knowing they would be read, carefully curating his thoughts about patriotism, yearning for his family, and stoicism. He claims that despite being starving, he threw away bacon when offered (shades of Agam Berger!)
Unbeknownst to him (as his letters were censored, although he was surprisingly not denied books to read), a large effort had begun on his behalf, and began to tear France apart. Although there was much antisemitism in the anti-Dreyfusard camp, there were also antisemitic Dreyfusards and non-antisemitic anti-Dreyfusards. The core of the argument was about the depth of France's commitment to liberal universalism, and to what extent these commitments could overcome the influence of the Church and army. (The army had realised early on that it had caught the wrong man and had engaged in a cover-up, including falsifying documents, so to exonerate Dreyfus would be a humiliating blow.)
Socialists were torn, since they had no great love for the army elite, but tended to see this (correctly, to some extent) as an inter-elite fight that was irrelevant to the working class. Léon Blum, Jew and future socialist Prime Minister, was a strong Dreyfusard. There was a schism between Jules Guesde (anti-Dreyfusard) and Jean Jaurès (pro-), basically a split between revolutionary and democratic socialism. Jaurès was instrumental in bringing the party over, portraying it as a question of whether rights apply to everyone. (And arguably as a direct result of the affair, a left-wing Dreyfusard government under Émile Combes enacted in 1905 the formal separation of Church and State, the core of laïcité.)
Clemenceau (another future PM) rallied a large group of academics, scientists and artists around an 1889 Manifesto of the Intellectuals (the origin of the modern use of the term "intellectual"). There were plenty of anti-Dreyfusard intellectuals - for instance, among the Impressionists, Monet, Pissarro, Paul Signac, and Mary Cassatt were Dreyfusard, while Cézanne, Rodin, Renoir, and Degas were anti-Dreyfusard.
The most famous Dreyfusard, of course, was Émile Zola. He could arguably be called an antisemite:
While French Jews tried to keep a low profile and allow non-Jewish allies to be the face of the struggle, Jews around the world cared deeply about it. "I'm not sure if the Dreyfus affair made such a noise in other cities as it did in Kasrilevke," wrote Sholem Aleichem, in his story about the frenzy it stirred up in his fictional shtetl. Herzl and Max Nordau (both Austrian-Jewish journalists) covered the affair and were led by it to Zionism; Nordau's 1892 novel Degeneration was inspired by what he saw as the corrupt decadence of French and European society. On the other hand, integrationists (such as the philosopher Hermann Cohen) saw the eventual exoneration of Dreyfus as proof that the proper place of Jews was in Europe. The (strongly integrationist) American reform movement, via its organ the American Israelite , initially compared Dreyfus to the traitor Benedict Arnold and "expressed sorrow that the abolition of capital punishment in France meant that he could not be put to death". However, as public sentiment, the movement began to support his vindication, while vainly cautioning that "the Jews have no especial interest in Dreyfus personally".
Dreyfus came from a family with lots of money and privilege. His income was far more than that of an average officer. This is part of the reason that his family was able to launch such a large and ultimately successful struggle to exonerate him. This was noted even by some Dreyfusards like W.E.B. DuBois, who saw this as a struggle for minority rights, but with a much higher profile than that of the countless black victims of lynching.
After being falsely accused of spying and a rushed, secret trial, he was judged guilty and exiled to Devil's Island, a prison even less pleasant than it sounds. Dreyfus was chained to his bed at night, developing bedsores and unable to move the insects that crawled over him. He wrote memoirs while there, knowing they would be read, carefully curating his thoughts about patriotism, yearning for his family, and stoicism. He claims that despite being starving, he threw away bacon when offered (shades of Agam Berger!)
Unbeknownst to him (as his letters were censored, although he was surprisingly not denied books to read), a large effort had begun on his behalf, and began to tear France apart. Although there was much antisemitism in the anti-Dreyfusard camp, there were also antisemitic Dreyfusards and non-antisemitic anti-Dreyfusards. The core of the argument was about the depth of France's commitment to liberal universalism, and to what extent these commitments could overcome the influence of the Church and army. (The army had realised early on that it had caught the wrong man and had engaged in a cover-up, including falsifying documents, so to exonerate Dreyfus would be a humiliating blow.)
Socialists were torn, since they had no great love for the army elite, but tended to see this (correctly, to some extent) as an inter-elite fight that was irrelevant to the working class. Léon Blum, Jew and future socialist Prime Minister, was a strong Dreyfusard. There was a schism between Jules Guesde (anti-Dreyfusard) and Jean Jaurès (pro-), basically a split between revolutionary and democratic socialism. Jaurès was instrumental in bringing the party over, portraying it as a question of whether rights apply to everyone. (And arguably as a direct result of the affair, a left-wing Dreyfusard government under Émile Combes enacted in 1905 the formal separation of Church and State, the core of laïcité.)
Clemenceau (another future PM) rallied a large group of academics, scientists and artists around an 1889 Manifesto of the Intellectuals (the origin of the modern use of the term "intellectual"). There were plenty of anti-Dreyfusard intellectuals - for instance, among the Impressionists, Monet, Pissarro, Paul Signac, and Mary Cassatt were Dreyfusard, while Cézanne, Rodin, Renoir, and Degas were anti-Dreyfusard.
The most famous Dreyfusard, of course, was Émile Zola. He could arguably be called an antisemite:
for instance, in his novel L’Argent (Money) in 1890, he described the area around the Paris Stock Exchange as «toute une juiverie malpropre…une extraordinaire réunion de nez» ("a whole filthy Jewish quarter…an extraordinary meeting of noses")but his famous J'Accuse…! blew the case open, triggering multiple libel suits that forced him into exile in Britain. Antisemitic riots broke out in France and Algeria. When it was discovered that Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry had forged a document incriminating Dreyfus, Henry committed suicide, and the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole launched a campaign to raise funds for a memorial, drawing thousands of contributions and letters expressing chilling fantasies of genocide decades before the Holocaust:
One priest prayed he might have a "bedside carpet made of kikeskin" so that he could step on it morning and night. A physician proposed "vivisection of Jews rather than harmless rabbits." Many of the contributions came from workers and craftsmen in industries, such as clothing manufacturing, which had been "invaded" by Jewish immigrants. Other contributions came from working people who felt humiliated by Jewish financial power more generally: "Jeanne, ex-maid for kikes," "a concierge for Jews who is disgusted by kikes," "Three embroiderers of Bains-les-Bains (Vosges), who, working for a Jew, earn 14 sous in 15 hours," "a laborer without work."Arendt (discussing the affair in The Origins of Totalitarianism) says that French Jews wanted to give up their Jewishness in order to assimilate into French society. Samuels strongly disagrees, thinking that this is a projection of the situation of German Jews. France had been the first country in the world to emancipate its Jews and French Jews (or Israelites) believed they could have both. True, there was antisemitism, but it was also possible to advance, as the Dreyfus affair shows: he would never have gotten so high in the first place in other European countries. Arendt also bizarrely calls Dreyfus antisemitic. She accuses the Jewish community of passivity during the affair, in order to try keep out of trouble (as she says German Jews did with Nazism). Zionists such as Max Nordau said the same thing. While there is some truth to it, it ignores the fact that a lot of Jews kept quiet because they thought that Jews openly lobbying for Dreyfus would be counterproductive, reinforcing conspiracy theories about Jewish power. There were even some influential Jews working backchannels who tried to keep their work secret (even planting stories in the Jewish press about Jewish apathy to the case).
A disturbingly large number of the contributions came attached to messages calling for physical violence against Jews. "Long live the saber that will rid us of all the vermin." "A patriot awaiting the saber to avenge us." "For God, for his country and the extermination of the Jews." "The flood of insults against the Army will be washed away in rivers of blood." Some of the messages eerily presaged the Holocaust. One contributor gave 25 centimes, one quarter of a franc, "to rent a deportation car." A resident of Baccarat, the capital of crystal manufacturing, wanted to see "all the kikes and kikettes and their kiddy-kikes placed in glass furnaces.
While French Jews tried to keep a low profile and allow non-Jewish allies to be the face of the struggle, Jews around the world cared deeply about it. "I'm not sure if the Dreyfus affair made such a noise in other cities as it did in Kasrilevke," wrote Sholem Aleichem, in his story about the frenzy it stirred up in his fictional shtetl. Herzl and Max Nordau (both Austrian-Jewish journalists) covered the affair and were led by it to Zionism; Nordau's 1892 novel Degeneration was inspired by what he saw as the corrupt decadence of French and European society. On the other hand, integrationists (such as the philosopher Hermann Cohen) saw the eventual exoneration of Dreyfus as proof that the proper place of Jews was in Europe. The (strongly integrationist) American reform movement, via its organ the American Israelite , initially compared Dreyfus to the traitor Benedict Arnold and "expressed sorrow that the abolition of capital punishment in France meant that he could not be put to death". However, as public sentiment, the movement began to support his vindication, while vainly cautioning that "the Jews have no especial interest in Dreyfus personally".
January 11, 2025
Writing a review that focuses on the Jewish aspects of Alfred Dreyfus, (and borrowing the book’s sub-title) the man at the center of the Affair that shares his name, will be about as difficult as writing a book on it. Diving right into things, as the author attempts—and rather well—to find how Judaism shaped the life of a man whom being perhaps at the wrong rank at the wrong time turned a progressive country on its head and for all we know, could have been the spark among sparks that led to even greater tragedies for Yiddishkeit decades later, we find something quite sobering: while born Jewish and raised in a semi-religious family, the man himself did not really seem to identify with it.
There are already several books on Alfred Dreyfus in English (including a historical fiction account of his supposed escape from Devil’s Island published about a decade ago!) which makes one ask: what can another book bring to the table? Being part of the Jewish Lives series published by Yale University, the answer is simple: a succinct yet well-written account containing—yes, some things most any armchair historian of the Affair may know—but also a worthy attempt to find ways to tie the person of interest to Judaism.
As noted, this in particular is a tall order because it seems outside of marrying ‘in’ (though being noted before the affair at least as libertine-leaning) and keeping his lodestar set on justice, he was more of a financially secure Frenchman of a non-Catholic persuasion than anything else. As we learn in the book, fame is not want he wanted. Studying Talmud? Not at all. Keeping kosher? Doubtful. We’ve a man who was born in the situation he was born into and just wanted to serve his country well via military service and unfortunately due to long-seated antisemitism that sprang to the forefront, his desire was denied, but his faith in the greater good remained iron-clad.
So who is this book for then? If you know the Affair through and through, you can probably skip this. If the Wikipedia page on it feels ‘good enough’, like our above historian the benefit to reading this may be muted. But it does have an audience (else this review would not exist!). If one is interested less in the man, but the Jewish response around him, the politics on all sides throughout the arrest, trials (and retrials!), and the aftermath all penned in a readable manner that does not run too long, then this book is for you.
---Notable Highlights---
On being Jewish (or his lack of it):
“Dreyfus was not a spiritual or religious person. He rarely spoke of God in either his personal or public writing. He also rarely evoked what we would call today his ‘Jewish identity.’”
and:
“It is important to note that Alfred Dreyfus rarely mentions God in his writings and never refers to his Jewish faith.”
but:
“Although he makes no mention of observing kosher dietary laws, he repeatedly states in his journal that he tossed his ration of conserved lard (bacon) into the sea, even in the early days when he was literally starving.”
And in spite of all this:
“You are perhaps more Jewish than you know,” he told the rationalist Dreyfus; “through your unflinching hope, your faith in something better, your almost fatalistic resignation. It is this indestructible principle that comes to you from your people, and it is this that has sustained you. A Christian, you would have died praying for divine justice. A Jew, you wanted to live to bring it about.”
There are already several books on Alfred Dreyfus in English (including a historical fiction account of his supposed escape from Devil’s Island published about a decade ago!) which makes one ask: what can another book bring to the table? Being part of the Jewish Lives series published by Yale University, the answer is simple: a succinct yet well-written account containing—yes, some things most any armchair historian of the Affair may know—but also a worthy attempt to find ways to tie the person of interest to Judaism.
As noted, this in particular is a tall order because it seems outside of marrying ‘in’ (though being noted before the affair at least as libertine-leaning) and keeping his lodestar set on justice, he was more of a financially secure Frenchman of a non-Catholic persuasion than anything else. As we learn in the book, fame is not want he wanted. Studying Talmud? Not at all. Keeping kosher? Doubtful. We’ve a man who was born in the situation he was born into and just wanted to serve his country well via military service and unfortunately due to long-seated antisemitism that sprang to the forefront, his desire was denied, but his faith in the greater good remained iron-clad.
So who is this book for then? If you know the Affair through and through, you can probably skip this. If the Wikipedia page on it feels ‘good enough’, like our above historian the benefit to reading this may be muted. But it does have an audience (else this review would not exist!). If one is interested less in the man, but the Jewish response around him, the politics on all sides throughout the arrest, trials (and retrials!), and the aftermath all penned in a readable manner that does not run too long, then this book is for you.
---Notable Highlights---
On being Jewish (or his lack of it):
“Dreyfus was not a spiritual or religious person. He rarely spoke of God in either his personal or public writing. He also rarely evoked what we would call today his ‘Jewish identity.’”
and:
“It is important to note that Alfred Dreyfus rarely mentions God in his writings and never refers to his Jewish faith.”
but:
“Although he makes no mention of observing kosher dietary laws, he repeatedly states in his journal that he tossed his ration of conserved lard (bacon) into the sea, even in the early days when he was literally starving.”
And in spite of all this:
“You are perhaps more Jewish than you know,” he told the rationalist Dreyfus; “through your unflinching hope, your faith in something better, your almost fatalistic resignation. It is this indestructible principle that comes to you from your people, and it is this that has sustained you. A Christian, you would have died praying for divine justice. A Jew, you wanted to live to bring it about.”
April 27, 2025
"You are perhaps more Jewish than you know, through your unflinching hope, your faith in something better, your almost fatalistic resignation. It is this indescructible principle that comes to you from your people, and it is this that has sustained you. A Christian, you would have died praying for divine justice. A Jew, you wanted to live to bring it about."
September 29, 2025
Well researched and written historical account of a man that many likely don’t know the story of (outside the French and Jewish worlds). The Affair that gripped Dreyfus’s life influenced countless people and what came to happen in the early 20th century. Definitely a denser read and one that will pose questions around identity, democracy, and more.
August 24, 2024
This was the best, most gripping book I read all year! I love history and could not put down this one. It made me laugh and cry. Totally ADDICTIVE. Run, don't walk! For context, I read a book every day, most of the day, for work.
November 3, 2024
Hatred and Ignorance Know no Bounds
The book does a great job of showing what Dreyfus went through while still loving his country. Horrible what his fellow soldiers and country did to him.
The book does a great job of showing what Dreyfus went through while still loving his country. Horrible what his fellow soldiers and country did to him.
January 26, 2025
I listened to the audio version of this biography. The writing generally was good. The life, quite engaging. There was a bit too much fighting with prior biographers over Dreyfus' character and especially his identification with Judaism.
July 12, 2024
DNF.
Focuses on the lives of French Jews in general and not Alfred Dreyfus as the title suggests.
Focuses on the lives of French Jews in general and not Alfred Dreyfus as the title suggests.
September 17, 2024
Well written and organized.
I easily grasped the impact of the Dreyfus Affair on the world order.
I easily grasped the impact of the Dreyfus Affair on the world order.
October 29, 2024
Another book that taught me a lot--about Dreyfus, France -- both at the turn of the century and the reverberations from "the Dreyfus Affair" that echo today.
October 31, 2024
A well written account of the Dreyfus Affair and how anti-semitism played an overwhelming role in it.
Read
November 25, 2024Ought to be required reading.
Read
February 18, 2025Leon
September 2, 2025
Read for my article on intellectuals. The book is a great introduction to the Dreyfus affair but it is a very slim volume and there are other much more scholarly works to chase up in the footnotes...
November 6, 2025
A deeply moving book. Well-written. Great place to start reading
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews