At first Dreyfus commemoration, Macron calls for vigilance against antisemitism as statue finds its place
On the first national day of remembrance for Alfred Dreyfus, 120 years after his wrongful treason conviction was overturned, President Macron urged 'constant vigilance' against rising antisemitism and witnessed the installation of a long-awaited statue at the Cour de cassation.
Ceremony at the Cour de cassation
President Emmanuel Macron presided over the inaugural national commemorative day for Alfred Dreyfus on Sunday, July 12, 2026, exactly 120 years after the Cour de cassation overturned the Jewish officer’s 1894 treason conviction. The ceremony, held before the Court’s facade on the Île de la Cité, assembled 150 guests. Dreyfus’s 99-year-old grandson Charles attended, as did Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin, CRIF president Yonathan Arfi, and Grand Rabbi Haïm Korsia. No political party leaders were present.
Macron's warning on antisemitism
Macron used the occasion to address a resurgence of antisemitic acts in France, which reached 1,320 in 2025, the highest tally of the previous three years according to the Interior Ministry. He invoked a direct parallel to the Dreyfus affair.
We know the old demons of antisemitism have never entirely left our country.
He added that “faced with the return of odious antisemitism, vigilance is a duty at every moment.” The president linked the historical struggle for Dreyfus’s exoneration to a broader civic responsibility, calling the ‘dreyfusards’ a model for refusing collective suspicion and always preferring proof to rumour.
The Dreyfus affair and its legacy
Dreyfus, a French general staff officer, was denounced as a spy for the German Empire and convicted on forged evidence in an antisemitic climate. He was deported to Devil’s Island in French Guiana. The writer Émile Zola’s open letter “J’accuse” brought the miscarriage of justice to public attention, and after a campaign by figures including Georges Clemenceau, Jean Jaurès, Anatole France and Marcel Proust, Dreyfus’s innocence was finally recognised on 12 July 1906.
Dreyfusism is a state of mind that refuses that a person’s belonging to a religion, an origin, a community can be the alibi for turning them over to blind justice and opinion.
- Captain Alfred Dreyfus condemned for treason, sent to Devil's Island
- Cour de cassation recognizes Dreyfus's innocence
- Tim's 3.5-metre bronze statue of Dreyfus is created
- Macron declares 12 July a national day of commemoration
- First national Dreyfus day; statue erected at Cour de cassation
A statue finally installed
A 3.5-metre bronze statue of Dreyfus, created by the artist Tim in 1985 and intended for a public square, had spent four decades moving between storage and temporary sites. It was erected at the Cour de cassation for the ceremony, standing at attention with a broken sabre. Paris mayor Emmanuel Grégoire announced that the neighbouring Place Maurice Barrès, named after the nationalist writer who was among Dreyfus’s most virulent opponents, will be renamed Place Lucie Dreyfus in honour of the captain’s wife, who tirelessly campaigned for his exoneration.
Honouring the Righteous
Macron said it was time to inscribe the names of the Righteous on every building where Jews found refuge during the Nazi occupation. “Each commune in France must make this its own,” he declared, broadening the ceremony’s reach from a 19th-century injustice to the memory of those who opposed the “Nazi barbarism.”
