Now - November 2020 - as part of this book: a historical essay (August 2020),
by Tim Austin (Dr T B Austin) with Diana Mara Henry, of the Georges France, Groupe 31 network,
one of the very first SIS-supported Resistance in France networks, and of its dynamic leader, Madame Louis,
very possibly the first woman to create and head a significant Resistance network.
To follow will be an analysis and appreciation of the war service record of Claire Dyment Scheinmann,
nominally in the WAAF but serving as a linguist in the British Y-Service under control of Bletchley Park and the SIS.
Upon receipt of payment, we will send you "Cher Camarade" a discussion of André's career in espionage based on his personal archive released in 2018,
documents from which are included in this essay presented by Diana Mara Henry at the German Studies Association Summer Workshop, Freie Universität, Berlin, 2018.
These sections will be transmitted separately to you along with a link for viewing an hour-long interview in French and in English of André
about his experiences witth Professor Mel Yoken, Emeritus, of U Mass Dartmouth and Mrs. Cynthia Yoken
SEE BROCHURE ABOUT NATZWEILER AND ANDRE Email us now!
CALL ME ANDRE:
Freedom Fighter and Spy
One man's magnificent story of resistance
Copyright © Diana Mara Henry
Click on his first post-war document dated May 19, 1945:
André's posh address "Avenue Montaigne chez Monsieur Paul"
(Hotel Plaza Athénée)
|
What do Middle School students say about André? A new page of documentation and tributes trom his World War 2 contemporaries for André While in Alsace to visit the camp in summer ,2016, DMH was interviewed on French radio: Here, courtesy of reporter Olivier Vogel of France Bleu Alsace (https://www.francebleu.fr/alsace) is a clip about her research on Natzweiler:
The clip above is about André in particular |
Call Me André has been purchased by Juedisches Museum, Muenchen; the Wiener Library, London; and are in the collections of the Mémorial de la Shoah and Yad Vashem in digital form as well as at the Centre de la Résistance et de la Déportation at Natzweiler, at Beit Lohamei HaGhetaot and the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation at Besançon; the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has set up a collection of documents about André. |
| Other resistors remember André- see right hand column and "Documentation," below |
Book review by Diana Mara Henry in the Journal of Military History, April 1,2015 European Resistance in the Second World War, edited by Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shepherd, pgs. 525-27
Before meeting André, Diana Mara Henry devoted her creative and professional life to documenting socio-political phenomena and causes: politics. the women’s movement, and one-room schools and school teachers have all previously been the subject of her award-winning journalism in the media of photography and writing. She has been the recipient of grants from the NY State Council on the Arts and the NY Foundation for the Arts, and of the Ferguson History Prize at Harvard College. André and Diana worked together for three years before his death in 2001 to create the final version of his memoirs which are now available through this website. For scholarly endorsements of this project, please seehttp://www.dianamarahenry.com/testimonials.php |
Documentation: References to André, mentioned by name, in histories of WW II:
Other resistors remember André- see right hand column on this site, and
•Sir Brooks Richards: Secret Flottillas, Vol 1: Clandestine Sea Operations to Brittany 1940-1944. "The passengers had arrived on after another at the Le Tac villa...Peulevé [sic] an intelligence agent of Austrian Jewish origin who had been working as a radio operator in Rennes in a BCRA intelligence network known as 'Georges France 31'..." ( page 115) "Three weeks later, on the night of 1/2 February, they went back....This time there were only three passengers, the Le Tac brothers and Peulevé [sic. This is the spelling of another British agent's name, Henri Leonard Thomas Peulevé .] It was a bright, moonlit night. They embarked Yves and Peulevé in one Folboat, Joêl went with the luggage and Peulevé's new suitcase in the other.....But disaster was awaiting:de Kergolay had been arrested during their absence in England. Peulevé was also arrested on arrival in Rennes...." ( page 116) This is listed as OVERCLOUD operation for SOE ( Special Operations Executive-the Le Tacs served in its RF section) whereas on page 314 "Peulevé AKA 'Le Neveu'" ( André's alias) is listed as part of TURQUOISE - an SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) operation. In his mémoir André states how, upon landing, he declined Colonel Passy's invitation to join the French and insisted on continuing to work for the British SIS.
http://www.plan-sussex-1944.net/
Mentions André and his Overcloud cohort on the dates of January 6 and
February 1, 1942 in the encyclopedic HISTORY OF WWII INFILTRATIONS INTO
FRANCE:
pages 21 and 22 of the 09072014 edition:
http://www.plan-sussex-1944.net/anglais/pdf/infiltrations_into_france.pdf
• Chombart de Lauwe, Marie-Jo. Toute une vie de résistance. ["A whole life of resistance"] Paris: Graphein, 1998. The preface recounts that her mother's intelligence gathering network, "La Bande à Sidonie" was absorbed into the network "31 Georges France" and what she did for it (André) and how it ended with their arrests, but mentions no names. The rest of the book recounts her experience of the prisons of Angers, la Santé, Fresnes, then Ravensbrück and Mauthausen. Also see her warm and detailed memories in correspondence with André, here.
• Arte F: http://lescombattantsdelombre.arte.tv/#/marie-jose-chombart-de-lauwe/entre-les-lignes/ Marie-José Chombart de Lauwe gives her testimony about the network Georges-France, saying, "I went to Rennes. And at Rennes, I was connected to the Georges-France network [described on screen as Réseau Georges-France 31; Réseau de renseignment et d'aide à l'évasion de prisonniers britanniques qui a oeuvré en Bretagne entere 1941 et 1942 / Network for intelligence gathering and escape assistance for British prisoners, operating in Brittany between 1941 and 1942] "….Me, in Rennes, I was most often in contact with André who was the liaison, at the Café de l'Europe and the Café de la Paix, and I brought him the documents etc. And in an emergency, I would go to Louis Le Deuff, the radio operator, at the Place St. Sauveur in Rennes…." Les Combattants de l'ombre: des européens contre le nazisme (Fighters in shadow: Europeans against Nazism) shown 7/23/2013. http://www.arte.tv/fr/3885730.html Put into book form as Les combattants de l'ombre by Bernard George et Ambre Rouvière. ARTE Editions / Albin Michel, 2011
• Coudert, Marie-Louise. Elles la résistance. ["They, the women of the resistance"] Paris: Messidor/Temps Actuels, 1983. Foreward by Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier. Portraits of two dozen women, including Marie-Jo Chombart de Lauwe, whose narrative includes her work for André
• Amicale Action. Livre d'Or de L'Amicale Action. Paris: O.R.I.,1953. Full name of the association: "Association Amicale d'Entr'aide des Anciens Officiers Chargés de Missions-Action et de leurs Collaborateurs recrutés en France." Peulevey is mentioned in the Liste Générale Alphabétique and in the Liste par Départements, Seine-et-Oise: "André Peulevey, 102, Boulevard des États-Unis, Le Vésinet."
•Joël Le Tac, Le Breton de Montmartre, Franck Reynaud
(Rennes: Editions Ouest-France, 1994)
pages 109, 110, 111, 118 124 et 125
•Yvonne Le Tac: Une Femme dans le Siècle (de Montmartre à Ravensbrück), Monique Le Tac (Paris: Editions Tirésias, 2000), preface by Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz. Includes account of the departure and return of André and his cohort to England, January-February, 1942, and the betrayal of Overcloud. (Pages 123-130.)
• Huguen, Roger. Par les nuits les plus longues: Réseaux d'évasion d'aviateurs en Bretagne 1940-1944[" During the longest nights: escape networks for airmen in Brittany 1940-1944"] Rennes: Ouest-France, 1986 References to André as Le Neveu and Peulevé and his network Réseau Georges France 31 on pages 38-39 and index.
•Le Camp de Concentration du Struthof / Konzentrationslager Natzweiler: Témoignages. Ed. Jean Simon. (Schirmeck: Essor, 1998), page 78
• Leroy, Roger, Roger Linet, and Max Nevers. 1943-1945: La résistance en enfer. ["1943-1945: Resistance in Hell"] Paris: Messidor, 1992. Features: map of the camps; preface of Doctor Henri Lafitte; foreword by Charles Joineau; rationale; four chapters: “Why were we sent there?”, “Before Death, Suffering”, “A ray of hope”, and “Dachau-Allach”; epilogue; note to the reader; maps, photographs, portraits by Felix Faure, survivor. Section about André entitled: "One of Ours is an Interpreter!" page 88; other portraits and passages of André Peulevey on pages 154, 159 and 204-205
• Lovinger, Robert "One Man, One Cause" 6/27/1999 http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990627/LIFE/306279885&emailAFriend=1#sthash.c0b1GEHs.dpuf and "He Saw the Best and the Worst of Mankind" 5/15/2001. New Bedford, MA: Standard-Times. Feature article and obituary. http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010515/NEWS/305159997&emailAFriend=1
These and more articles about André in the US press online here
• Maradène, Georges. Réponses à un questionnaire: La vie dans les camps de Natzweiler- Struthof et Dachau. ["Answers to a survey: Life in the camps of Natzweiler-Struthof and Dachau"] Dions, 1995. Unpublished. 162 pages. About André on page 23: "To be noted, too, that the prisoner serving as our interpreter, who arrived with us on July 9 [1943] was a German Jew living in France, member of the Intelligent [sic] Service. The Germans would never know. He was liberated I think from Dachau and lives in the US."
•US Holocaust Museum. Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Washington, DC. Lists survivors by camps, including 32 from Natzweiler when searching by "Natzweiler-Struthof": André's record: http://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=4987387
•André Scheinmann, KLNa, Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah interview #24954,1/27/97 at Boca Raton, Fl. Two video tapes of testimony of a “secret Jew” at Natzweiler, imprisoned for his work as a British spy. Interview conducted by Helen Sendyk, videography by Donna Schatz: http://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage.aspx?testimonyID=27014&returnIndex=0
Click to view these books and letters
André and his wife Claire on their way to the US in 1950
Selected Presentations about André and the Natzweiler-Struthof camp by Diana Henry:
Carl Cherry Center for the Arts (exhibit), Carmel, CA, 1990
Alliance Francaise de la Péninsule de Monterey, 1997
Belmont, MA Public Library, 1998
Brandeis University, Romance and Comparative Literature Deparment, 1998
The French Library and Cultural Center, Boston, 2000
Harvard Hillel, Yom Hashoah, 2000
Annual Holocaust Remembrance Program, co-sponsored by the Veterans Council of Greater New Bedford, U.Mass-Dartmouth's Boivin Center for French Studies and Center for Jewish Culture, Ahavath Achim Synagogue, the Inter Church Council of Greater New Bedford, hosted by Tifereth Israel Synagogue, 2001
Boston Neighborhood Network,"It's All About Arts,"
December, 2005
Springfield College, Yom HaShoah lecture, 4/12/2007
Association for Jewish Studies panel: Survivor testimony in writing the history of a neglected concentration camp. December 2009
40TH ANNUAL SCHOLARS’ CONFERENCE ON THE HOLOCAUST AND THE CHURCHES, Philadelphia,March 2010. Paper published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Fall, 2011, Vol. 46, #4
André's wife, Claire: at the time of their meeting in London, 1942, she worked in the RA,F, most notably in Operation Corona.
Claire's RAF pin and a service card for Claire Jarrett Sergeant 2130888 WAAF Clerk/Signals/Linguist born 1/1/1918 [ died 12/10/85]
For more information about Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof, see:
http://www.dianamarahenry.com/natzweiler-struthof/
Photos of the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, by Diana Mara Henry
and drawings from memory of camp scenes by survivor Henri Gayot
And photographs from the documentation used for the Nuremburg trials'
"Medical Case"
Natzweiler Has been a French National Monument since 1968
Aerial reconnaissance photo of Konzentrationslager Natzweiler (K.L.Na) by the RAF, July, 1944
André back in French uniform after the war...
André at home in Padanaram Village, MA, 1998.
Mrs. Yvonne LE TAC is no more
,André's obituary tribute and memories of Yvonne Le Tac from whose house and with whose sons he left for England and back January6-February 1, 1942, that was published in Gens de la Lune (People of the Moon) February 1958. Translated by Diana Mara Henry from the article shown at right.
Barely two months ago, our friends Joël, Yves and Roger Le Tac brought their mama to her final home. Many comrades of the Association [Gens de La Lune / People of the Moon in whose issue of February ‘58 this tribute by André was published] attended the moving ceremony.
Today, to render legitimate homage to her memory, “Gens de La Lune” is publishing an article that our comrade “Peulevey” graciously sent us from the United States.
The editors of this journal, on behalf of the Amicale (Association) Action, is taking this means to send expression of our sympathies and sincere affection to the Le Tac family.
New Bedford, MA 12/29/1957
She leaves a vacuum that nothing will be able to fill. Beneath her fragile exterior, she was a great lady. Her untamable courage, her iron will, her burning, pure patriotism would appear as soon as the first German detachments arrived in her Brittany. Distributing flyers, demonstrating on behalf of English aviators fallen to the water and brought back to the coast, gathering around her people who were still hesitating, proclaiming her disdain during looting by German soldiers brought her for a first time before a military court. Fifteen days in jail were the result. Rather than disarm, she went on to shelter Joél and his comrades as they returned by parachute from England and would help Yves as he cast into Britain the links of a great network.
Her house would quickly and ceaselessly become the relay of a route that led to London. How many of our own passed that way: Scamaroni, Labit, Riquet [the author himself] and others who are no longer alive, alas, to speak of long hours passed in that haven of peace.....
A sensitive and attentive hostess, she made sure to have comforting food available at a time when scarcity was already a problem. Yvonne le Tac was a participant in all our departures. She pulled the canoe hidden less than twenty yards from a house full of German soldiers, that was to bring us six kilometers out to sea to connect with the English speedboat.
When several trips were necessary, she would lead those who were next to leave to a far point, a grenade in each hand, ready for everything in order to protect our departure, pacing the cliffs where German sentinels prowled, and would not return home until the last of us had at last embarked.
Her house was an arsenal where were always stored submachine guns, revolvers, daggers, radio transmitters, and who knows what else.
She was arrested on February 7, 1942. She was 60 years old. Those who knew the camps how what ferocious energy, what a stubborn will to survive for forty months the life of prisons and camps: Ravensbruck, Maidenec, Birkenau, where she broke her arm. Left untreated, she weighed only 25 kilos [55 pounds]. A Polish woman becomes attached to her, and with the purest devotion, helps her survive.
Comes the Liberation. The Russians kept her for a few months more, then send her home via Odessa. She finds her whole family in Marseille: her husband, liberated at Compiègne, Yves, liberated at Dachau by the Americans, Joël, liberated at Bergen-Belsen by the English, Andrée, her daughter-in-law, liberated at Mauthausen by the Red Cross. “The Miracle Family” Maurice Schumann called it.
Alas! For her, the problems would not cease. She rebuilds her home in Brittany where she retires for a few years. In a first fall, she fractures shoulderblade and collarbone, Three years ago, in another fall, she breaks three vertebrae. She wouldn’t recover. She comes back to Paris, surrounded by the affection of her former students many of whom go back to the class of 1901 and have remained faithfully devoted. She was their “great friend” and advisor.
This past summer, when she embraced me, as I was leaving for the US, she wished me good luck, just as she did at the time of our departures for England. I told her “au revoir” [“Be seeing you”] and she answered: “No, not this time.”
A lady has left us. But she will continue to live in memory and in the heart of those who had the privilege to know her.
THIS PAGE and ALL OTHER PARTS of THIS WEBSITE are COPYRIGHT © DIANA MARA HENRY
No reproduction without permission!
New Documentation of André's leadership of the operations for the networks:
Email us for the SOE documentation....
The Man and the Book
Joseph Scheinmann, aka "André Peulevey" # 4368 at the KLNa and #101739 at Dachau Camp mugshot and drawn by Henri Gayot , five days before they left Natzweiler for Dachau
Prisoner list from Natzweiler, destination Dachau André Peulevey is prisoner 4368...
ID card from the French National Office of Veterans and War Victims Service Historique de la Défense - Dossiers administratifs de résistants #GR16P472792
André at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau |
The Memoirs of André Scheinmann: A Hero’s Journey Before becoming André, Joseph Scheinmann was a teenager when his family sought refuge from Germany in France in 1933. He had been a leader of Jewish youth in Germany before leaving: he organized sports camps and tutoring for his peers when they were excluded from school activities, and militated against their having to participate in Hitler rallies. André was a soldier for France, for the three weeks France fought Hitler; when he enlisted, in 1939, the French army assigned him a dead man’s name and identity, that of André Peulevey. He escaped from prisoner of war camp and went to work for the railroad, immediately sniffing out Turban, his boss, for a British spy and joining his network as second-in-command. Taking cover for his flawless German by enrolling as a graduate student at the University of Rennes and as would-be professor of German, he served as an interpreter for the Nazis and obligingly translated for the SS in Brittany when they toured their military bases, ports, fuel depots, and submarine facilities. Thanks to him, the British knew what to expect of bombing raids originating at the Rennes airport, off-limits to the French, but where André had placed a Polish cook who reported to him. He got a shave every morning at the barber shop where the Nazi pilots unwound and talked about their missions; he demanded and received strategic reports by placing phone calls to Germany through the telephone system set up by the Nazis at their railroad headquarters. His reports were radioed and couriered to London for months, allowing the British to bomb and destroy the facilities he'd identified with great accuracy. In January, 1942, he was brought to London, overnight across the English channel, for additional training. While he was there, his network was infiltrated: three weeks later, as soon as he went back to work, he was caught. (See reference to André's "exfiltration" to England here, as well as in the memoirs of others in the Resistance, in right column of this page....) Days of and nights of torture, months of prison, the most vicious of the concentration camps, Natzweiler-Struthof: a dreary and dismal fate, illuminated by his bravado, courage and pride. At Gestapo headquarters in Paris, he insisted on coffee, toast and jam, a typewriter and quiet if he was to type his report on conditions in London. He passed messages in and out of jail in slices of omelet. He grew healthy on a starvation diet while in solitary confinement, because other prisoners sent him food down the air vents. He never talked - except to say he had gone to London to look up an old girlfriend. At Natzweiler, although a Nacht und Nebel "NN" prisoner, he became a Kapo, and organized a shadow dance of work to protect the dying prisoners under his command and the SS guards who craved sleep, protection and loyalty as much as their charges. André reports with enduring pride that when he was put into the “weberei" (the weaving workshop) "production immediately dropped by 30%.” When the most feared “Rottenführer” (SS corporal) at Natzweiler asked him if his teammates always worked so hard he said:“Of course not, only when you are here!” And this Ehrmanntraut, master of the dogs, this sadist extraordinaire, addressed him with formality and respect. Dachau seemed easy by comparison, and that was where he was liberated by the Americans on April 19, 1945. He ran to embrace a soldier - her helmet fell off, her blond hair fell to her shoulders, and he found himself hugging a famous female photographer, Lee Miller. That was the last of the good memories -- he soon found out his parents had given up hope when he was taken, let themselves be captured, and died in Auschwitz. But André met Claire at the US embassy in Paris. She had had a brilliant career in radio operations for the RAF Intelligence during the war. They married, resettled in the US and started a family. |
For more photographs and a slide show of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, weblog and other survivor memoirs:
dianamarahenry.com/natzweiler-struthof/
This website and its contents are
Copyright © 2005 Diana Mara Henry
Here now is his story: CALL ME ANDRE.
Call Me André: Freedom Fighter and Spy
Summary
In this memoir of his scandalously daring exploits as a spy for the British from the director’s office of the French National Railroads for Brittany, André Peulevey, the name by which the Jewish German ex-pat Joseph Scheinmann was known, details others’ and his own sacrifice and heroism -- documented in eye-witness accounts --- that saved many lives and inflicted savage damage on the Nazis and their collaborators. Then punished under the “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog) decree, André and his comrades continued to fight from inside Gestapo prisons in Paris and at Natzweiler-Struthof, the only Nazi Konzentrationslager on French soil, dedicated to the punishment, exploitation and elimination of political prisoners from two dozen European countries, and the gassing of Gypsies and Jews.
Chapter Outline
Introduction by Diana Mara Henry: How did André, freedom fighter and spy, a Jew who wasn’t known to be one, manipulate the Nazis and survive a camp designed “exclusively for non-Jews?”
My Story Begins: A time of foreboding as relentless change polarizes German youth in the 1930’s and propels André from leadership to exile.
A New Homeland: Life in France looks good: business, tennis and romance flourish.
War Approaches: As Germany clandestinely re-arms, André and his father volunteer to fight for France
Fighting for France: André seeks out other soldiers who want to fight, only to be asked by townspeople to stop. By wiles and forgery, he avoids being taken to Germany as a prisoner of war.
Spy for the British: Hired as a German
translator at French National Railroad (SNCF) headquarters, André
discovers his boss Louis Turban (Service Historiques de la Défense -
service administratifs de résistants # GR16P 580117 and GR16P 580 118)
is organizing a sabotage, intelligence, and escape network. André
monitors German strategies and losses in the bombing of Britain, German
troop and materiel shipments, u-boat bases, submarines caches and the
port of Brest, reporting it all to the British through the Réseau 31,
Georges France, Johnny and Overcloud networks. His handler is Thomas
Greene, known as "Uncle Tom'" and Peulevey is known as "Le Neveu."
By Night to London: While André is spirited across the channel
in kayak by moonlight, for training and outfitting, his network is
broken and their radio operator reveals his bosses’ identity under
torture.
Prisoner of the Gestapo: By bravado decision, André deliberately falls “into the mousetrap.” He has his torturers disciplined and fools his Gestapo interrogators into giving him a cushy writing assigment before his eventual “trial,” death sentence, and 18 months (including 11 in solitary) in prison, where the resistance continues.
“NN” at Natzweiler: “Nacht Und Nebel” is decreed to make political prisoners disappear into “Night and Fog” like a character in Hitler’s favorite Wagner opera (Das Rhinegold), and Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace is the camp that the "NN" are taken to for the ultimate punishment. André interprets the language and reality of their taskmasters’ terror and mayhem, organizes his fellow Frenchmen during their terrible ordeal, making sure they understand German orders, negotiating with the ruling class of Communist prisoners, imposing discipline and glavanizing morale.
Four Episodes: André leaves the hospital barracks just ahead of the “work detail ascending to heaven,” is assigned to the weaving shop, where he reorganizes the workers and reduces production by 30%, produces a play, and becomes a KAPO (prisoner boss.) “Do they work like this when I am not around?” asks the murderous Rottenführer Ehrmanntraut. “Of course not!” André snaps back. They took seven months and never finished the curve in the road.
Dachau, Allach, Dachau: Natzweiler-Struthof is evacuated ahead of the Allied invasion (the first concentration camp to be discovered). André is sent to Dachau, its slave labor camp of Allach --- where he produces another surreptitious theatrical , this one on the theme of “France and its Provinces in Song” ---and back to Dachau, where he pulls a still live man from a pile of bodies being carted off to cremation and is himself cured of typhus.
Freedom and Loss: Liberation from Dachau is followed by death caused by overeating for many; but André and his friends hitch a ride with American GI’s back toward Paris where he settles up with the British underground and French army paymasters, and is tragically aware that his parents will not return from Auschwitz. His romance with Claire, a translator he met in England, is miraculously reignited and the happiest years of life still lie ahead.
The Concentration Camp Universe: “Why could so many people be kept under control by so few?” “How could one survive a camp?” André faces the hard questions and shares his observations about how the prisoners were played against each other; which classes of prisoner rose to the top; why status in the outside world was not a benefit in the camps; why terror works; what character traits, past history, and goals helped prisoners to survive and how he himself was able to resist a loss of dignity and not abuse his fellow prisoners.
Conclusion; “What happened to us happened in an ordinary time...the guards, the members of the Gestapo and the SS were composed of normal people like us all...teachers, postmen, workers, doctors could be turned into torturers and murderers. The Nazis could only accomplish what they did, first in Germany and later in all the occupied territories, thanks to a lot of complicity in high-ranking places and also thanks to the indifference, lack of courage, ignorance and will not to believe what seemed to be the incredible acts of the Germans.”
Appendices:
•Glossary of French and German terms
•Family album photos and photos of André in several British-created disguises
•Detailed cv of André’s French military service, resistance and spy
work, arrest and deportation, and French government decorations
•References to André by name in a half dozen other eye-witness and historical accounts of the resistance and the camps
•Photos of Natzweiler-Struthof from WWII and today. A French National
monument inaugurated by General de Gaulle in 1968, the camp was the set
for the film The Young Lions, starring Marlon Brando, Dean Martin, and Montgomery Clift
•Eye-witness survivor’s drawings of torture and execution of the NN at Natzweiler
•Nuremburg Trial documents on the gassing of Jews at Natzweiler
•French government-issued tourist brochure for Natzweiler-Struthof
•Highlights of little known historical documents of importance to researchers as well as the general public:
•The “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog) Decree
•The order of October, 1942, transferring Jews from
all concentration camps to Auschwitz or Lublin
(Treblinka).
•List of the 70 slave-labor dependencies of Natzweiler
•Ground-breaking bibliography of books and source documents about Natzweiler
This page and its contents Copyright ©2005 Diana Mara Henry
Reproduction and excerpts by permission from:
Here is a tribute by André to one of his operatives, published in the journal of the "People of the Moon", who came in and out of England to France by moonlight. Translation of the article follows.
A link to her speaking memories of André:
• Arte F: http://lescombattantsdelombre.arte.tv/#/marie-jose-chombart-de-lauwe/entre-les-lignes/ Marie-José Chombart de Lauwe gives her testimony about the network Georges-France, saying, "I went to Rennes. And at Rennes, I was connected to the Georges-France network [described on screen as Réseau Georges-France 31; Réseau de renseignment et d'aide à l'évasion de prisonniers britanniques qui a oeuvré en Bretagne entere 1941 et 1942 / Network for intelligence gathering and escape assistance for British prisoners, operating in Brittany between 1941 and 1942] "….Me, in Rennes, I was most often in contact with André who was the liaison, at the Café de l'Europe and the Café de la Paix, and I brought him the documents etc. And in an emergency, I would go to Louis Le Deuff, the radio operator, at the Place St. Sauveur in Rennes…." Les Combattants de l'ombre: des européens contre le nazisme (Fighters in shadow: Europeans against Nazism) shown 7/23/2013. http://www.arte.tv/fr/3885730.html Put into book form as Les combattants de l'ombre by Bernard George et Ambre Rouvière. ARTE Editions / Albin Michel, 2011
For the dates of the life of this resistance fighter, see: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Le_Tac
Another reference is Monique Le Tac, Yvonne Le Tac : une femme dans le siècle : de Montmartre à Ravensbrück, Paris, éditions Tirésias, 2000, 152 p. (ISBN 2-908527-77-4)
The above article by André / Joseph Scheinmann will be part of his book,
Call Me André: Freedom Fighter and Spy
Please email us for advance orders!
Who Betrayed André ? Who Betrayed the Le Tacs?
The fascinating connection to "La Chatte" as depicted in David Tremain's newest book:
| Who is André? | ||
See incarceration documentation here See André's handwritten career notes Biography: Joseph Scheinmann (Born 1/28/1915 in Munich) French Government Decorations: (Officier de la Légion d'Honneur) (Medaille de la Résistance) (Croix Miitaire) (Médaille des Déportés)
Resistance activity / Intelligence for the British and Free French:
Prisoner #101739 at Dachau, Allach and Dachau, 9/7/1944 - 4/29/1945
Joel Le Tac on André Scheinmann, AKA André Peulevey Pages 109-111: The third “DZ” (dropping zone) was named FER 1, simply because government railroad (“Chemin de fer”) agents were responsible for it. “They were made available to me by André Peulevay (sic), my only contact from this network, who was put in place by the Intelligence Service. It was a very effective network centered in Rennes which provided invaluable information on train movements “This intense activity of course caught the attention of the British... “At that time, toward the end of 1941, I had inumerable contacts...I understood that the figures allowed de Gaulle to assert himself with the English, who seemed to doubt the legitimacy of his claims...The orders given to me by those who were cozily ensconced in London--recruit, recruit and recruit some more-- seemed to go against the interest of Mission Overcloud.” ....As a precaution, he set a policy of meeting only the heads of the organizations working with him. That’s how he got to know the “boss” of the railroads at Rennes, André Peulevay, the man in charge of FER 1. “At first, he had everything it could take to alarm me: he was the interpreter for the Germans of the Reichsbahn and those in charge of railroad traffic in Rennes railroad station. He was a German Jew, blond with blue eyes, and he speaks French with a melodious voice. He was known to the world as Peulevay, but his name really was Schweiderman (sic.) He was a strange young man who surprised me by the carefree way he threw himself into the world of intelligence. After having met him in a bistrot in Rennes, I invited him to come see me in Paris, Rue Gît-le-Coeur.” Joël le Tac was nursing uneasiness about André Peulevay. He wasn’t quite able to get a handle on him, and wanted to find some relief for his anxiety. After meeting him at his home, Joel Le tac put one of his former buddies from Mission Josephine B., chief-corporal Cabard who had just come back from the free zone, to shadow him. Cabard follows through and dogs André Peulevay to the Gare Montparnassse, where he took the train for Rennes. “I certainly was reassured. There was nothing that could create any suspicion whatsoever about Peulevay.” Furthermore, André Peulevay
outdid himself. He asked Joel le Tac if it wouldn’t be possible to have
his radio operator send a mass of information collected by his railroad
network....”I agreed to put Joe X’s radio at the disposal of the
railroad group. I myself put the messages from Rennes into code. “ Page 118: During the first days of January, 1942, the villa at St. Pabu became a nest of spies. One after another, resistance operatives found their way to the Le Tac home. The two brothers are there, of course, as well as Jean Forman, Henri Labit, André Peulevay ( head of the railroad network in Rennes) Robert Simon (head of the Valmy network in Paris), Chenal, an Air Force officer.... Page 124: On the first of February, Joel and Yves Le Tac board the MGB submarine chasing vessel. André Peulevay, the head of the railroad network in Rennes, the Intelligence Service network which Joel was collaborating with, accompanied them in the crossing that returned them to the coast of Brittany. He’s got a brand new radio. Each has a great deal to do in the weeks to come. André Peulevay of course heads straight back to Rennes...." ____________________________________________ The commemorative volume of the survivors’ group for the Action network describes what they call “ The last Overcloud operation”:
.....Not knowing it, Overcloud was living its last
hours...it had been betrayed....André Peulevay was the first to fall, on
the 2nd of February, into the mousetrap.”
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Diana Mara Henry's presentation of Call ME André from the 40th Annual Sholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches at St. Joseph's University, 201, in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Email us for a copy, please.
Why André's parents couldn't come to the US- put off by the State Dept. on 6/23/1941 that doomed them to their death in the concentration camps. Response to their daughter Mady's husband, Dr. Scheinmann, a US citizen:
Max Scheinmann page at Yad Vashem
