London exhibition explores how the Dreyfus affair fuelled mass antisemitism

A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London examines how the Dreyfus affair turned antisemitism into a mass public controversy. Curators say the 1890s press coverage has echoes of how anti-Jewish hatred spreads today, while showing how a wrongful conviction could be used to question a Jewish person’s loyalty and attack those defending him.

The exhibition brings together about 40 items, including posters, newspapers and journals, some collected by the library’s founder, Alfred Wiener. One poster series depicted pro-Dreyfus figures as grotesque creatures; its publishers were shut down after a year. The rightwing paper La Libre Parole helped spread claims of Dreyfus’s guilt, while Émile Zola’s 1898 letter “J’Accuse” accused the French government of antisemitism and a cover-up.