Helga's Reviews > J'accuse!

Note: My 5 star rating is for Zola's courage and sense of compassion and humanity rather than the contents of the letter or his writing proficiency.

When truth is buried underground it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.

In 1894 Alfred Dreyfus, a respected Jewish officer in the French army, was accused of passing on military secrets to the German embassy. Based on unfounded allegations and false documents, he was unfairly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the dreaded Devil’s Island penal colony.
A couple of years later and after inquiries made by Lieutenant Colonel Picquart another officer by the name of Esterhazy was identified as the true culprit. But to cover up their mistake, Esterhazy was acquitted immediately.

It is my duty to speak; I will not be an accomplice. My nights would be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man who is atoning, in a far-away country, by the most frightful of tortures, for a crime that he did not commit.

J'accuse which was published in L'Aurore newspaper in 1898 is Émile Zola’s open letter to Dreyfus’s accusers.

He addresses the letter to the President and accuses:
Lieutenant-Colonel du Paty de Clam of judicial error,
General Mercier of having made himself an accomplice,
General Billot of withholding proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus,
General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of having made themselves accomplices
General de Pellieux and Major Ravary of having conducted only a partial inquiry
The three experts in handwriting, Belhomme, Varinard, and Couard, of having made falsified reports
The war offices, of having carried on a smear campaign to cover up their mistake.
The war council, of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.

Zola goes on to say:
"As for the people whom I accuse, I do not know them, I have never seen them, I entertain against them no feeling of revenge or hatred. They are to me simple entities, spirits of social ill-doing. And the act that I perform here is nothing but a revolutionary measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.
I have but one passion, the passion for the light, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much, and which is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me into the assize court, and let the investigation take place in the open day.
I await it."

Émile Zola wasn’t alone in defending Dreyfus. Anatole France, Charles Péguy, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Clemenceau, Henri Poincaré and Georges Méliès were among the "Dreyfusards".
Dreyfus was eventually exonerated in 1906.