Here's a footnote to this post of yesterday - which was February 23. On February 23 1898 Émile Zola, who had accused the French government of anti-Semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, was convicted of libel.
And here's a footnote to that footnote:
Madeleine Levy was the granddaughter of Alfred Dreyfus and his wife Louise Hadamand. Her mother was Jeanne, and her father, Pierre Paul Levy. As a young girl she had been a girl scout, and as a young woman, a social worker. When France was invaded, she joined the Resistance and also worked with the Red Cross. A collaborationist tract in Toulouse spoke of her as the "Jewess who dared not speak her name," and ended its diatribe with, "Sweep her out!"Although the Levys had been warned of a crackdown and had fled from Toulouse, Madeleine had returned to the city to work and to pack provisions for her family. While at the family's apartment, she was arrested and sent to Drancy. In 1943, she was put on Convoy No. 62, along with 83 children whom she helped care for "with forced gaiety." On her arrival at Auschwitz, Madeleine was assigned to a work group, laboring at an excavation near Birkenau, but she soon fell ill with typhus. When she died in January 1944, she weighed less than 70 pounds.