This year marks the 125th anniversary of Alfred Dreyfus’ arrival at Devil’s Island. On April 14, the former captain in the French army, found guilty of treason a few months earlier by a military tribunal, began his life sentence as the sole prisoner on this malarial rock off the coast of French Guiana. As guards ushered Dreyfus into his prison cell — a stone hut thick with mosquitoes and rats — they were ordered, should the convict try to escape, to “blow his brains out.” The prison director feared that Jewish conspirers would send a vessel to the island to free the traitor.
