Overview

I Am André is an amazing real-life story of espionage, of courage and resistance, and of friendship and love. It pulls back the veil on the hidden history of the struggle for the identity of the Resistance in France. The life of ‘André’ Joseph Scheinmann is more intriguing and compelling than any work of fiction. His true-life story of derring-do starts as a Jewish youth in Munich, whose family moves to France in 1933 to escape the Nazi tide. He joins the French army at the outbreak of WW2 and escapes from a prisoner-of war camp after the bitterly brief fight for France in the summer of 1940. André becomes a spy and saboteur for the British and Free French whilst working undercover as translator and liaison with the German high command at the Brittany headquarters of the French National Railroads. Summoned by the British, he clandestinely crosses the Channel for initiation and training as an MI6 agent in England. His network betrayed during his absence, he is arrested on his return to France. André then begins an even more perilous journey with interrogation in Gestapo prisons and the little-known Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace, before being transferred to Dachau and Allach, ahead of the advancing Allies. Many vintage photographs and letters from his agents come to illustrate this heart-pounding story of a debonair young man in a broken world who remade himself as a cunning fighter for freedom.

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9781917837149

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Independent scholar Diana Mara Henry (Brandeis MA 2000, Harvard B.A. 1969, Ferguson History Prize, 1967) has since 1985 translated and researched the memoirs, assembled a pioneering bibliography, and corresponded with survivors of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace, France. In 2004 she created www.natzweiler-struthof.com. Her video interview of Phillip Maisel is at the USHMM. She has been published in the Journal for Ecumenical Studies, reviewed Resistance in the Second World War for the Journal of Military History. She has also presented at conferences and symposia at the University of Salzburg, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Genocide Studies Progam of Yale University, German Studies Association Summer Workshop at the Freie Universität of Berlin, Birkbeck University of London, Monash University, The 9/11 Memorial and Museum, and others. Diana's first career, as a photojournalist, was honored with exhibitions including at the National Women's Hall of Fame, Overseas Press Club/NYC, the Organization of American Historians’ Centennial Conference, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Named special collections of her work were purchased by UMass/Amherst, The NY State Museum, the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, and the NY Public Library. Her books of photography are Women on the Move and A Life in Photography and her art is on display at saatchiart.com.

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