France, Then and Now

Though I’m sure the Norsk composer Edvard Grieg did not know treyfah‘s
the opposite of kosher, and means food that by good Jews is dissed,
he refused to play in France while it was persecuting Dreyfus,
and even after Dreyfus was acquitted he in France was hissed.

All kudos to the man who wrote the music for Peer Gynt, in contrast to
the shame Degas deserves. Although like Edvard a great artist Ed-
gar was an antisemite, less notorious than an ‘artist’ who
did not get into art school but then murdered many Jews instead,

but no kudos to contemporary France for posthumously elevating
Dead Dreyfus’s military rank, example of esteem
antisemites have for Jews who’re dead, while salivating
rabidly against most living members of the Jewish team.

I recalled this poem on 6/6/25 after reading “France Moves to Atone by Elevating Alfred Dreyfus as Antisemitism Spreads: The National Assembly voted to promote the Jewish army captain to brigadier general more than 130 years after he was falsely convicted of espionage and imprisoned in French Guiana,” NYT. 6/3/25, in which Roger Cohen writes:

For Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army captain arrested in 1894 on false espionage charges that were a reflection of virulent antisemitism in the French military, reparations have been a long time coming. The French National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, took a big step in that direction on Monday when it voted unanimously to promote Dreyfus, who was publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment, to the rank of brigadier general. It was an apparent acknowledgment that, after more than 130 years and at a time of repeated desecrations of Jewish sites in France, the Republic’s atonement had been incomplete.