News and Reviews

“Testimony from Hell”. “A sepia-colored photograph of a handsome young man dominates the cover of I Am André. A warm yet slightly mischievous smile mirrors his kind eyes which seem filled with an ocean of unshed tears…..”

https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/testimony-from-hell/

Also published in 3/5/25 National Security News and Commentary

The book is filled with amazing details about André’s exploits as a creative thinker who uses his understanding of the German mindset against his oppressors. Over and over, throughout his survival story he embodies the virtues of quick thinking, flexibility, and ingenuity. And he holds fast to the conviction that helping others to survive with him is one of the greatest acts of resistance to Nazi tyranny.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/what-real-resistance-looks-like/

Thank you, Fern Sidman!

Read the interview! In TVJ News.com

Journalist and author Diana Mara Henry discusses the story of ‘André’ Joseph Scheinmann and the process behind her new book.

After three decades of research, Diana Mara Henry discovers the man behind the aliases.

I AM ANDRE. German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy is a recently published book by Chiselbury Publishing, written by award-wining journalist, Holocaust scholar and researcher Diana Mara Henry. It is, succinctly stated, one of the most significant books ever published on espionage in World War II, and deserves to be read, studied and discussed by all who are interested in this all-important subject.

The book is absorbing and compelling, deeply moving, fascinating and, above all, thoroughly honest. The riveting historical pageant celebrates ways how heroism, faith, fortitude and goals achieved truly count for something. In this richly detailed book, there are chapters that are not only engaging and anecdotal, but are also the most spellbinding and theatrical accounts of the Second World War that I have read in years! This is just not another war story. It is a masterpiece filled with every emotion possible, such as joy and sorrow, grief and triumph, sadness and  happiness.

Andre, born Joseph Scheinmann in Munich in 1915, is Andre Joseph Scheinmann, a New Bedford, Massachusetts resident  from 1951 to his death in 20011. Born in Munich in 1915, he was a German Jew and French Army soldier turned French resistance fighter.. As an Mi6 agent he was at the fulcrum of the jockeying of French and British secret services for the earliest, nearly unknown earliest French networks, 1940-1942. in espionage and was a hero par excellence throughout the Second World War. Henry’s monumental, extremely developed biography details his life, and gives the reader an absolutely sterling perspective of every aspect of Scheinmann’s action and struggle, from beginning to end. to maintain integrity, undercover of another identity. He was a hero par excellence throughout the Second World War, even in Gestapo prisons and in concentration camps Natzweiler and Dachau.

The impact of Henry’s exegesis of Scheinmann resonates far beyond the pages of this book. It enhances our understanding of World War II and all its intracacies.This oeuvre, which is also richly illustrated, enriches our understanding of one man and what he did to make us understand what truly constitutes quintessential heroism. For this and more, Henry deserves praise par excellence, and I AM ANDRE. German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy deserves a place in the Pantheon of impressive, invaluable books that will most certainly live on forever.

The Substack by Mike-McCormick, best-selling author of An Almost Insurmountable Evil. “If you are brave and in need of truth, read my books.”

https://substack.com/home/post/p-158947803

I told my video game-obsessed 13-years-old son about I Am André, and he wants to read it. I told my 89-year-old mother about I Am André, and she wants to read it. Now I’m recommending it to you.

It’s a fascinating book that Diana Mara Henry has compiled. First is her overview introduction which sets the stage for the story, which Diana came to through her correspondence with survivors of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace, France.

Her meeting with André’s son at a class reunion in 1994 set Diana to work to create this amazing story. Eventually she met and interviewed André himself.

There’s a lot there. Most of the book is André’s autobiography. It starts with him as a German Jewish boy describing how he hates the way the Nazi bullies have assumed control of his life. Writing in the first person, young Joseph Scheinmann calmly explains that he and his family were at the cusp of the Holocaust and knew it. With teenage candor, Joseph gives voice to why so many European Jews perished. And he shares why even though they considered fleeing to Palestine, they didn’t.

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I think some of the best passages are André’s descriptions of how he and French compatriots casually outwitted their Nazi occupiers. His secret boat ride to England, his liaison with British intelligence, and return to France reads like a Hollywood war movie.

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The details of his ordeal and eventual triumphant emigration to America will run through your mind for years. The book is well documented with a wealth of archival documents, photos, and maps. The drawings done by the concentration camp survivors are especially haunting. To me, the best way to identify quality literature is if it sticks with you. It does for me. And so, that’s exactly what I Am André is. Quality literature.