Alfred Dreyfus statue to finally receive permanent home in central Paris

A resin copy of the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in the courtyard of the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris. Photograph: frederic REGLAIN/Alamy View image in fullscreen A resin copy of the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in the courtyard of the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris. Photograph: frederic REGLAIN/Alamy Alfred Dreyfus statue to finally receive permanent home in central Paris Sculpture of Jewish army officer wrongly accused of treason has been moved around the city for decades For 40 years, the statue of Capt Alfred Dreyfus has been moved around Paris, never finding a permanent home. The French army twice refused to allow it to stand at l’École Militaire, where Dreyfus, a Jewish officer it had wrongly accused of treason in 1894, was stripped of his rank in one of the most notorious acts of antisemitism in France’s history. View image in fullscreen Alfred Dreyfus. Photograph: Apic/Getty Images A spot opposite the city’s Palais de Justice was considered and rejected. For want of a better place, the bronze statue created in 1985 was placed in the Tuileries garden, then tucked away across the River Seine near the former site of the Cherche-Midi jail, where Dreyfus was imprisoned after his arrest. Now, 120 years after the officer’s name was cleared, and a year after he was posthumously promoted to the rank of brigadier general , his statue has been given what many believe is its rightful place in central Paris. On 12 July, a national Dreyfus commemoration day, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Emmanuel Grégoire, the mayor of Paris, will unveil the 3.5-metre (12ft) figure in Rue de Harlay on the Île de la Cité. It will stand in front of the cour de cassation, France’s highest civil court, which finally exonerated Dreyfus on 12 July 1906 . “From now on, every July 12, a commemorative ceremony will be held for Dreyfus, celebrating the victory of justice and truth over hatred and antisemitism,” Macron wrote last year. “Thus, Alfred Dreyfus and those who fought through him for liberty, equality and fraternity will continue to serve as the example that must inspire our conduct.” View image in fullscreen The Dreyfus statue has been tucked away in Place Pierre Lafaue in the 6th arrondisement since 1994. Photograph: Ajax/Alamy Ariel Weil, the mayor of Paris Central and a descendant of the Dreyfus family, has been one of the main people pushing for the statue to have a prominent, permanent home. Until now, he said, the attitude of the state and authorities had been: out of sight, out of mind. “It’s been wandering around Paris for years,” Weil said. “The general idea seemed to be: we’ll put it in a corner of Paris where it won’t embarrass anyone and won’t be seen and we can forget about it. “It was in a place nobody wanted, not historians, not the Dreyfus family, not the artist.” The Dreyfus affair is one of the most notorious political events in French history and almost brought down the Third Republic. The army accused Dreyfus of passing