A statue honoring Alfred Dreyfus — the Jewish French army captain wrongly convicted of espionage in the late 19th century — has finally found a permanent home in Paris, 120 years after his exoneration, marking the latest effort to redress one of France’s most infamous antisemitic injustices.

Jewish leaders and political figures gathered on Sunday for the inauguration of the 3.5-meter (12-foot) bronze statue outside the Court of Cassation, the tribunal that overturned Dreyfus’ wrongful treason conviction on July 12, 1906. The unveiling coincided with the first observance of France’s national day of commemoration for Dreyfus, established by President Emmanuel Macron last year.

Created in 1985 by French artist Louis Mitelberg, the statue depicts Dreyfus standing proudly while holding a broken sword, symbolizing the injustice he endured. Despite its significance, the sculpture remained largely out of public view for decades after plans to install it at several prominent locations were repeatedly rejected.

During the ceremony, Macron warned that the forces behind the antisemitism that fueled Dreyfus’ persecution continue to threaten French society today. “We know that the old demons of antisemitism have never completely disappeared from our country,” the French leader said, calling for constant vigilance to prevent acts that “target people because of who they are.”

Among those attending was Dreyfus’ 99-year-old grandson, Charles Dreyfus, who expressed “deep joy” at finally seeing a permanent public monument to his grandfather erected in the French capital.

“I must sadly admit that I would not have imagined, at my age, seeing antisemitism resurface with such virulence in our country,” he said.

Last year, France’s National Assembly voted unanimously to posthumously promote Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general, another symbolic act of justice more than a century after his conviction.

In 1894, Dreyfus, a 36-year-old officer from the Alsace region in northeastern France, was accused of leaking secret information to a German military official and put on trial amid a fierce antisemitic media campaign. Despite a lack of evidence, he was convicted of treason based on a handwriting comparison, sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, and stripped of his military rank.

Years later, Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, then head of French military intelligence, secretly reopened the case and discovered that the handwriting on the incriminating document belonged to another officer. When he brought the evidence to the army’s general staff, Picquart was dismissed from his post and imprisoned for a year.

Dreyfus was retried in 1899, again found guilty, and sentenced to 10 years in prison before ultimately receiving a pardon — though the charges against him were not formally overturned. Full exoneration came in 1906, when the Court of Cassation annulled the original verdict and reinstated him with the rank of major. He died in 1935 at the age of 75.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as the largest Muslim community in the European Union.

Antisemitism in the country remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide — more than 3.5 per day — according to the French Interior Ministry’s annual report on anti-religious acts. Although the total fell by 16 percent from 2024’s 1,570 cases, the second highest ever recorded, the report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high.”

Over the past 25 years, antisemitic acts “have never been as numerous as in the past three years,” the report said, noting a dramatic spike following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year, and the number of antisemitic acts has roughly tripled since 2022.