The exhibition “Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for Justice” was mounted at the Tolerance Centre of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum on 19 April 2011.
This educational exhibition was organised by the Musée d‘art et d’histoire du Judaisme in Paris. It is based on 3,000 personal documents of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) as well as objects with historical value (manuscripts, letters books, posters etc.) presented to the museum by Dreyfus’ grandchildren.
The exhibition presents, for the first time in Lithuania, the famous civil trial at the turn of the century that divided French society. At the centre of the trial was an ordinary Jewish officer of the Republican Army who was charged with espionage on insufficient evidence. The trial received a public response across West Europe and facilitated the separation of the Church from state in France as well as served as one of sources of inspiration for Theodor Herzl to form the idea of the statehood of Israel. Dreyfus’ controversial conviction provoked heated discussions in the French press on anti-Semitism and the identity of France as a Catholic country or a newly created republic with equal rights for all citizens. The writer Emil Zola, one of Dreyfus’ supporters, wrote his famous appeal to the French president “J’accuse!” (1898). The Dreyfus Affair was the first case of a democratic society in Europe when a falsely accused Jew was finally exonerated by the country’s citizens as an equal member of society.
Vincent Duclert, a historian and Dreyfus biographer, who was awarded the Jean Michelle Gaillard Prize for historic research in the Dreyfus Affair in 2006, delivered a lecture at the opening of the exhibition.
Ieva Šadzevičienė, head of the Tolerance Centre and exhibition curator, addressed the guests and spoke about the historical period a hundred years ago when the main values of the modern world matured and the main concepts of human rights were substantiated. The director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Markas Zingeris, spoke about the Dreyfus Affair pointing out that it was still vital nowadays, as neo-Nazis in Lithuania (just like the French who supported the anti-Dreyfus camp in the last century), chant nationalistic slogans such as “Lithuania for the Lithuanians” (France for the French!) and swastikas are painted on the monuments in the Fort IX memorial.
The French Ambassador Francois Laumonier speaking at the opening of the exhibition said that he was pleased with the active collaboration between the French Embassy, the French Culture Centre and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Thanks to it, the cultural heritage of the Litvaks who emigrated to France or important historical issues of the French Jewry are being introduced to the Lithuanian public
Present at the opening of the exhibition also was Anne Helene Hoog, the curator of the exhibition of the Judaic Art and History Museum in Paris who spoke about the inception of the exhibition “Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight for Justice” as well as about the importance of the message the Dreyfus Affair carries in present day France.
Present also were Pascal Hanse, director of the French Culture Centre; the Spanish Ambassador Miguel Arias Estevez; the acting charge d’affaires of the British Embassy, Stephen Conlon; deputy head of the mission of the Embassy of the Czech Republic, Martina Heranova; second secretary of the Turkish Embassy Seyda Hanbay; first secretary of the Polish Embassy Michal Grodski, ambassador-at-large of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs of the Lithuanian Seimas, Emanuelis Zingeris; Violeta Gaižauskaitė and other guests.
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