Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews

 Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1999,hardcover, illustrated, index, 358 pages, condition: new.

Frank Foley was a British MI6 intelligence officer working undercover as a Passport Control Officer in Berlin, who risked his life to save over 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. By issuing thousands of forged passports and visas, and hiding refugees in his home, he acted as a "Pimpernel" to escape Nazi Germany before WWII. 

 As MI6 Head of Station, Foley had no diplomatic immunity, making his actions to help Jews escape highly dangerous and technically illegal, as he often broke strict British immigration rules.

Methods: He provided visas for Palestine to Jews without the required  in assets, often accepting minimal funds and ignoring illegal, undercover Zionist efforts to smuggle people out.

 He personally intervened to get people out of concentration camps and hid them in his own home. Despite his efforts, he remained largely unknown for decades due to the secrecy of his job, but was later recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations". Known as a "British Schindler," his story was uncovered by author Michael Smith in this book Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews.

You need to appreciate that Captain Frank Foley was at times both a spy and a civil servant and in an age when both jobs could be exercised to whatever degree the individual cared about his duties to country or the common good or where possibly both. If he had chosen to be a strict civil servant as other colleagues behaved he would have turned a blind eye to the happenings in Germany, to the persecution of the Jews and to the uncivilised practices of an evil and sadistic state regime. It was the independence of being an operative of MI6 that made his awareness and humanitarian actions so notable. He bent rules to give many an opportunity to escape the horrors of the concentration camps and the ruthless bloody persecution of honest and upright citizens. He lived in Germany for many years and saw the way evil gripped a nation and in a quiet and methodical way went about helping as many as he could without getting caught by either his government employers or the Nazi authorities. The book gives a very detailed understanding of the society and the system that trapped and killed so many and you are left wondering why countries like Britain did not do more to help but one could ask the same question about the Syrians fleeing their country today - the sickening attitudes to those being persecuted is not just endemic in other countries but lives on in so called democratic and law abiding nations as well. The book follows this understated and modest man as he continues his involvement through the war and makes you even more impressed by his MI6 duties and actions. I came away wondering what wasn't included because of both the clandestine activities and the Official Secrets Act but what made me, a retired civil servant, so proud was that this man moved heaven and earth to save who he could and put the common man above the red tape and bureaucratic rules of indifference. If you doubt what took place in Germany under Nazism then you need to read this book.