Dreyfus: A Very Modern Affair Part 1: The Illiterate Spy

This is an October 7th story, but one that begins not in 2023, but in October of 1894 with the arrest of French military officer Alfred Dreyfus, who also happened to be a Jew. The implications of his framing, arrest, incarceration and the fallout of his eventual exoneration reverberate today. Over this five-episode series, we examine how these events unfolded, and how they connect to the antisemitism that exists today.

In this first episode, we begin with the fraught political climate in France, a secretly gay general, and an illiterate cleaning lady-turned-spy had to do with it all.