Macron Links Dreyfus Commemoration to Call Against Antisemitism

Paris – 12 July 2026: President Emmanuel Macron combined the first national commemoration of Alfred Dreyfus‘ rehabilitation with an urgent appeal against antisemitism. France must confront the re-emergence of this ideology with unrelenting vigilance, the head of state declared. The memory of the Jewish officer wrongly convicted of treason was thus explicitly given contemporary political significance.

By a decree published on 7 July, 12 July has been designated a national day of commemoration marking the recognition of Dreyfus’ innocence. The date recalls the ruling of the Court of Cassation on 12 July 1906, which definitively overturned the conviction. The first ceremony takes place in the year marking the 120th anniversary of that decision.

Dreyfus was convicted in 1894 in a trial marked by antisemitic resentment and deported to Devil’s Island. The affair divided the Third Republic for years. Only the public mobilisation of intellectuals, politicians and journalists, along with a judicial reassessment of the evidence, led to his rehabilitation. The case remains a benchmark for the rule of law, press freedom and the equality of citizens.

Macron placed the historical memory in the context of present-day dangers. Antisemitism must neither be trivialised nor explained as a side effect of other conflicts. At a commemoration for Ilan Halimi in February, the president had already stressed that the fight against hatred of Jews was the responsibility of all French people and all state institutions. The new Dreyfus commemoration now gives this approach a lasting institutional framework.

The president also called for the names of recognised Righteous rescuers to be made visible at the places where, during the German occupation, they protected Jews from persecution and deportation. This would ensure that national remembrance is not confined solely to central memorials, but is brought into municipalities, schools and specific local sites of memory.

Since 2000, French legislation has honoured the Righteous with a dedicated national day of remembrance for victims of racist and antisemitic crimes committed by the French state. Those honoured are people who took in, protected or defended persecuted individuals without compensation and at risk to their own lives. Macron’s proposal builds on this tradition while extending it through visible commemoration at historical sites.

Politically, the president thus connects two different levels of remembrance: the state’s miscarriage of justice in the Dreyfus case and the responsibility of citizens during Nazi persecution and the Vichy regime. Both cases point to the same republican obligation: protecting Jewish citizens and combating antisemitic incitement are not matters for a single community, but a core duty of the state.