“Though symbolic and significantly late, the posthumous promotion of Alfred Dreyfus is a welcome gesture,” Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS.

“That said, with the dramatic rise in anti-Semitism in France, which seems to grow by the day, it is vitally important that the same officials who have addressed themselves to the historic wrongs against Alfred Dreyfus should now—with the same energy and conviction—address the mounting anti-Semitism which has deeply impacted the French Jewish community,” he said.

The Dreyfus affair exposed deep-seated anti-Semitism in French society and caused a public storm that led to a long legal battle to exonerate his name. It is also seen as a major catalyst for modern Zionism.

The lower house of the French Parliament unanimously approved the legislation in June, and the Senate backed it earlier in November.

The Dreyfus case is one of France’s most infamous miscarriages of justice. Accused of passing military secrets to Germany, he was convicted amid a wave of anti-Jewish fervor and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.

His innocence was later championed by figures such as the novelist Émile Zola, who wrote J’accuse!, as well as by intelligence officer Georges Picquart, who exposed the real culprit.

Eventually exonerated in 1906 and reinstated as a major, Dreyfus died in Paris at the age of 75 on July 12, 1935.