The Response of Dreyfus affair in Warsaw Press.

Known in France simply as “The Affair” began in late 1894, when Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer of Jewish origin, was convicted of spying for Germany. Despite the vehement denials of the accused and numerous doubts, Dreyfus was deported to Devil’s Island. In the meantime, documents proving his innocence emerged. The public became aware of the new facts, so numerous protests came out culminated with Zola’s famous article J’accuse…! from January 1898. As a result, the case was reopened in 1899 and the sentence upheld along with the proposal of a pardon, and finally, only in 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated.

I would like to present different attitudes that represented the attitude to Dreyfus affair in Warsaw press. The response of conservative Warsaw daily press Kurier Codzienny represented with feullietons by Bolesław Prus, Polish liberal Warsaw press Prawda edited by Aleksander Świętochowski, the response of anti-Semitic journal Rola and finally Izraelita published by assimilated Warsaw Jewry. These totally different attitudes toward the infamous case would show of how complex it was and how complicated it was to respond to it.

The problem of Dreyfus Jewish decent was relevant and crucial to each of the title. When we analyse the attitude to the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of the Jewish question, the most important thing to notice is that some journals played down the anti-Semitic aspect of the whole episode while the others stress it enormously. For instance Prus deliberately turned a blind eye to it. Świętochowski was similarly insensitive to the anti-Semitic aspect of the Dreyfus affair. Although the editor of Prawda adopted a different position from Prus, deeming the entire affair to discredit France and defending Zola. In turn the assimilationist Izraelita was convinced of Dreyfus’s innocence from the beginning, while anti-Semitic Rola was certain of his guilt.