The Officer and the Jew

This is a very good column by British novelist Robert Harris (Fatherland and Enigma) about Georges Piquart, the high-ranking French Army officer who in 1896 discovered Alfred Dreyfuss–the disgraced Jewish officer accused and convicted of passing secrets to the German military–had been framed and was rotting on Devil’s Island a victim of gross injustice. Piquart, who earlier had suspected Dreyfuss and was even anti-semitic toward him, nonetheless blew the whistle all the way to the top of the French military. For his trouble, he was persecuted and imprisoned for a year. His info did eventually reach a civilian legislator. The real traitor Esterhazy was finally exposed and Dreyfuss at last exonerated and freed from Devil’s Island. Yesterday was the date Piquart died, in 1914. Harris’s next novel will be on Piquart, An Officer and a Spy. One really good nonfiction book on the Dreyfuss Affair was Nicholas Halasz’ Captain Dreyfus: The Story of a Mass Hysteria. Harris’s piece revives the Halasz book for me, like I read it last week, though it was years ago, when I was at Franconia College. If I still have my old copy I’ll photograph it and share the cover here. Also eager to read Harris’s new novel.