(DREYFUS AFFAIR)

AUCTION 32 | Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Autographed Letters, Manuscripts, Graphics and Ceremonial Art

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Lot 87

(DREYFUS AFFAIR)

ZOLA, EMILE. Humanite - Vérité - Justice, Lettre `a la Jeunesse [Humanity - Truth - Justice, Letter to the Youth] (Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d’appel, 1897). French. pp.13. Soft printed wrappers, detached. * ZOLA, EMILE. Humanite - Vérité - Justice, Lettre `a la France [Humanity - Truth - Justice, Letter to France] (Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d’appel, 1898). French. pp.15. Soft printed wrappers, detached. * ZOLA, EMILE. Brieven aan den President der Fransche Republiek [Letters to the President of the French Republic]. (Amsterdam: Het Volksdagblad, n.d.). Dutch. pp.16. Soft printed wrappers, detached. * LARPENT, Colonel. Les Leçons de l’Affaire Dreyfus [The Lessons of the Dreyfus Affair] (Paris: Chateau-Thierry, Imp. Moderne, 1930). French. pp. 59, (5)

Est: $500 - $700

Journalist Emile Zola was the indefatigable defender of Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish captain in the French army, unjustly accused of espionage on behalf of the Germans. In his Lettre `a la France, brought out on January 6, 1898, Zola did battle with the Army and Church: “Today the tactic of anti-Semitism is quite simple. Catholicism tried in vain to gain sway over the populace…Churches remained deserted…But here an opportunity presents itself to stir up those common people, to poison them with this species of fanaticism, to have them march through the streets shouting, ‘Down with the Jews!’ ‘Death to the Jews!’ What a victory it would be if a religious war could be unleahed!” (p.10). See F. Brown, Zola: A Life (1995), p. 733 Dreyfus: See also Lot ***