An Interview with Diana Mara Henry, Author of “I Am André, German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy”

An Interview with Diana Mara Henry, Author of “I Am André, German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy”

By: Fern Sidman

Q: What really compelled you to spend 30 years on researching Andre’s life?

A: After meeting André I was compelled to read his memoir. The contrast between his courtly, modest demeanor and his swashbuckling tale compelled me to move from California to Massachusetts to be near him and fine-tune his memoir. More than that, his kind and patient character combined with his intransigeant values were a source of strength as I was coming out of a difficult divorce.

His relentless realpolitik helped me realize how befuddled my accepted wisdom had been – that “everyone is good at heart” – was a mistaken impression I had shared with poor Anne Frank. Much as he had helped his concentration camp fellows by sharing his conviction that one has to react to the reality of one’s situation rather than to the dictates of wishful thinking, so I realized I could help others by sharing his gritty, noble story.

Eventually, as my research uncovered more and more validation of his gift of time and effort for his comrades in the resistance- he worked for them longer after the war than he had while they were operating against the Nazis- I could do no less than emulate his devotion by sharing their stories, too. He had been a such a good friend to his comrades; I wanted to repay his gifts with my own.

Q: Who along the way helped you to understand or to confirm his extraordinary undercover and spy work?

A: Authors of books by his comrades in the resistance and the camps were the first people and witnesses I corresponded with and met, before they passed on into history as he did in 2001. Then in 2006 I created a website for his story, and that brought me queries, and eventually invaluable research, writing and publishing help from British authors Tim Austin and Tim Spicer among others.

Spicer, the author of a book about the cross-Channel escape of resistors and insertion of spies like André, who was an MI6 agent, came to see me to examine André’s secret archive of documents after he published “A Most Dangerous Enterprise.” André’s archive, revealed to me by André’s son, in 2018, eventually led Spicer to include several pages about André in his most recent book, “A Suspicion of Spies,” about the head of the SIS section for France whose address and phone numbers André had penned into his little black book.

And a network of historians, government officials, and former spies eventually contributed thousands of documents from the National Archives of the UK and France to help me create a coherent and iron-clad picture of who André really was and how much he really did.

Q: Which of his family members or descendants told you tales that appeared no where else?

A: André’s sister Mady, who escaped the Holocaust when her father brought her to the US in 1939 and saw her safely married to a cousin in New Bedford, spoke lovingly about André. Her wonder that as an older brother he still took the time to teach her to play chess, chaperoned her to dances ( we have pictures of that ) and sent her photographs in 1942 of him in different disguises created for him in London are unique memories she shared.

André moved to New Bedford and lived near her for the last 50 years of his life, continuing their close ties – and their passion for tennis! And André’s cousin Edmond Torn spoke to me of André’s courtship of Claire, as he was there as a boy when André spilled tea in Claire’s lap to get her attention. The whole story is told in the book, as is another family connection Edmond revealed: André’s mother’s uncles who were world-famous illusionists and of whom no one else, including André, had ever spoken…even though he obviously inherited their gifts for misdirection, impersonation, and the cultivation of illusion.

Q: Did the various Holocaust Museums already have his Memoir and were they able to assist you in your research?

A: The first part of “I Am André” is his memoir, and before he died I was able to donate photocopies of it to Yad Vashem (Jerusalem), The Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris). The US Holocaust Memorial Museum (DC), The Living Memorial to the Holocaust (NYC), The Munich Jewish Museum and the Ghetto-Fighters Museum/Beit Lohamei HaGetaot (Galilee).

Now of course, these museums and others have the book as it has been published, the second half being my account of all he did not tell, with 120 images in color. The Arolsen Archives of the International Tracing Service contributed several documents from the concentration camps and the tragic fate of André’s parents Max and Regina, who perished in Auschwitz. The USC Shoah Foundation was especially generous in giving access and permission to use transcriptions and a photo from his video testimony

Q: How did you met Mel and Cynthia Yoken who spent time with Andre in Massachusetts and whose interview you include in the book?

A: André introduced me to Professor Mel and Cynthia Yoken and they contributed both their video of André, a much more open and informal interview than the one he had done for the Survivors of the Shoah project. Eventually Mel invited me to speak about André at the lecture series he hosted at Tifereth Israel in New Bedford, to an impassioned audience -many of whom had known André and Mady. And Cynthia graciously contributed a transcript of their interview that is included in the book.

Both Mel and Cynthia in 2022 attended the graveside ceremony of tribute by Le Souvenir Français, the French government’s Veterans’ Memorial division, which also featured André’s biography that year among 100 heroes on their 1942 memorial publication.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish with this book?

A: I hope people will enjoy reading it! For all its sturm and drang, it includes a lot of humorous episodes – the resistance wasn’t just about blowing up trains, but also about showing solidarity and mocking the oppressor. André’s clever manipulation of the Germans (he really knew how to do that, having grown up in Germany) is told with a spirited irony that draws us to his side, and makes us deliciously complicit.

I think it’s a great introduction for young people – since at the time André was in his mid-twenties – to the history of World War II, the resistance, international politics, the secret services, and the concentration camps. Anyone can go back in time and live the history through his eyes.

Q: What is your own background, academic, professional, personal?

A: I was brought up from age 2 and a half speaking only French with a French governess. I attended the Lycée Français de NY, where all courses except American History and English were taught in French, and went on to major in Government at Harvard. While there, I received the Ferguson Prize for my Sophomore essay in History, and received my training in photojournalism as a Photo Editor for the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

I went on to be a freelance photographer and taught at the International Center of Photography in NYC. In 1985, during a father-daughter bonding trip to Alsace, where my father’s father was born, we visited the concentration camp Natzweiler, where André was interned. My life for the next ten years until I met André marked my transition to another career in independent research and scholarship.

After I met André, in order to marshal the respect his story deserved, I got my MA at Brandeis and began to be invited to speak about Natzweiler at international conferences – and I always included André.

Q: What would you like to say that I have not asked about?

A: Although “I Am André” may be a unique Holocaust story, it very much illustrates the poignant situation of the Jews in exile. The men in André’s family were soldiers- his uncles officers of high rank, for Poland, his father, for Germany, in World War 1, and he himself as a soldier in uniform for France, then in the army of the shadows. Inevitably we can ask ourselves how other countries have used our people’s military talents and how they despise our warriors who defend our indigenous ancestral homeland. I Am André is a beacon of Jewish pride in our values, wherever we serve.

Diana Mara Henry is the author of “I Am André, German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy” Her web address is: https://www.iamandre.live/