Number 92: Sheryl and I spent Monday 13^th January 2020 at Ile Royale of French Guiana, France’s infamous Penal Colony, (remember the book and film: “Papillon”). One of the three Islands, Devil’s Island, is where Alfred Dreyfus was cruelly incarcerated after being unjustly accused of treason in an Anti-Semitic France. Theodor Herzl was so profoundly impacted by what became known as the “Dreyfus Case” and accompanying chants of “Death to the Jews” that he became convinced that the only solution is Zionism and a Jewish State. The rest of course is history!

My name is Raymond Treves Schkolne. Treves was given to me by my parents z”l, to ensure continuity after all the known males in the Treves family perished in the Holocaust and my maternal grandparents, whose surname was a’ Cohen Treves, had three daughters. Dreyfus is a Jewish surname derived from the town of Trier on the Moselle, known in French as Trèves.  So Treves and Dreyfus is the same name, just as Shkolnik, Schkolne and Skolni are the same name. (My brother David who lives in Israel changed Schkolne to Skolni  – it’s easier!)

“Treves” also claims descent from Rashi and the town of Troyes in France. It has a long and illustrious history of many scholars and rabbis. Trefus; Dreyfus; Trivash; and many others were all different spellings of the same name.

These are further small pieces of the interwoven tapestry, another window into my personal history of which I know so little….