There was finally no hesitation. “The French nation is posthumously raises, Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general”. This is the unique article of the law that deputies voted unanimously on Monday, at first reading.
197 deputies participated in the vote and All voted “for” Raise the rank of brigadier general who was captain when the artillery officer was arrested and tried for espionage, accused and condemned because Jewish, of ending his life in the prison.
Although he was rehabilitated in 1906, his five years spent on the Devil Island had never been taken into account in the progress of his career. He had thus finished with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel de reserve, when he could have claimed the rank of general.
Gabriel Attal (Together for the Republic) tabled a bill in this direction in early May.
At the end of the vote, the rapporteur of the text, the deputy for the Bas-Rhin Charles Sitzenstuhl (ensemble for the Republic), Alsatian as Dreyfus, thanked the deputies of all sides for having supported the bill and called the senators “to quickly seize this text to finish the work”.
Then turning to the gallery where three members of the Dreyfus family stood, of which her grandson Charles, 98 years oldhe told them that “despite the tightness in our country at the moment, the Republic is great when it knows how to rise to the level of history, above political contingencies, when it is also able to repair its mistakes”.
