The “British Schindler”

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Perhaps his ordinary appearance—small, slightly paunchy, bespectacled—helped Frank Foley become “a consummately effective” spy as Sir Alex Younger, current head of Britain’s MI6, has described him. No one would suspect such a mild-mannered, unassuming man of being a spy.

Born in 1884, Francis (Frank) Foley, was the third son of a railway worker, whose family may have originated in Ireland in the early 1800s. After attending local schools in his home town of Highbridge, Somerset, Foley won a scholarship to Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, where he was taught by the Jesuits. He then went to a Catholic seminary in France to train as a priest but transferred to the Université de France to study Classics. There he decided to pursue an academic career instead of the priesthood. He traveled extensively in Europe, becoming fluent in French and German.

In 1908 he began traveling around Europe, taking teaching jobs to pay his way. When World War I broke out, he was living Hamburg. After returning to England, he joined the Bedford and Hertfordshire Regiment in 1915 and in 1917 was sent to the Western Front as a second lieutenant. Later that year, Foley was hit by a German bullet and suffered a serious lung injury. After a six-week stay in hospital it was decided that he would not be fit for front-line action. A senior officer had noted his language skills and encouraged him to apply to the Intelligence Corps. In 1919, he was recruited by Military Intelligence (MI6) and sent to the British Embassy at Berlin. His cover job was Director of the Passport Control Office, but he served as head of that MI6 station. 

Foley took a flat in Wilmersdorf, a largely Jewish middle-class area. In 1921 he married Kay Lee, and the couple’s daughter was born a year later. From there he monitored the activities of Bolshevik agents in Germany. Thousands of Russians lived in Berlin, most of them having fled communism, though some were believed to be Cheka agents. During this period Foley developed “a long standing and officially established liaison” with the German police “for the exchange of information about Communism.”
The day after Hitler took power, agents searched for Jews in Berlin and beat them. They destroyed synagogues all over Germany. Foley was appalled by the moral and social depravity of the regime and horrified by the distress and desperation of the Jews as Nazi persecution of them grew. On March 29, 1933, Foley sent a message to London: “This office is overwhelmed with applications from Jews to proceed to Palestine, to England, to anywhere in the British Empire.”
From 1935, an ever growing number of Jews appealed to Foley’s office for immigration visas to Palestine, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the British Empire. Immigration rules were strict in those days of economic depression, but it became more and more obvious that there was a growing need for Jews to leave Germany.

Defying the Foreign Office, Foley bent the rules to issue 10,000 visas for British Mandatory Palestine. Although a visa to Palestine cost £1,000, Foley accepted payments of £10 on the grounds that £990 would somehow appear once the refugee disembarked at Haifa. When people said they had no money, he hinted that maybe someone could write them a letter promising them £1,000. He had no diplomatic immunity in Berlin and risked his own safety. Had he been exposed by the Nazis, he would have suffered a fate much worse than being persona non grata.

Sometimes he went into internment camps to get Jews out, hiding them in his home, and helping them get forged passports. One Jewish aid worker estimated that he saved tens of thousands of people from the Holocaust.

By the time of the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, Foley and his wife had begun sheltering Jews in their apartment. When the Second World War started, Foley left Germany, leaving behind a wad of already approved visas with instructions to distribute them to those fleeing the Nazis.

At the 1961 trial of former ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Foley was described as a “Scarlet Pimpernel” for the way he risked his life to save Jews. One witness said, “There was one man who stood out above all others. Captain Foley, a man who in my opinion was one of the greatest among the nations of the world. He rescued thousands of Jews from the jaws of death.”

According to one woman who was 16 when she traveled from East Prussia to beg for a visa to Palestine, even though she did not meet Britain’s conditions for entry: “Foley saved my life. We heard that there was this man Foley who was kind to the Jews. My mother begged him. He just paced up and down a little and then asked for my passport and put the visa stamp on it. He did not ask any questions.” She added, “He was small and quiet. You would never suspect he was a spy.”

From 1939 to1940, he served as a passport control officer in Norway until the Germans invaded, when he was attached to C-in-C Norwegian Forces in the Field. He received the Norwegian Knight's Cross of the Order of St. Olaf for his services there.

On January 1, 1941, he was awarded Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George as a Captain for services to the Foreign Office. Also that year, he was tasked with questioning Hitler’s Deputy Rudolf Hess after Hess’s flight to Scotland. After Hess was hospitalized in 1942, Foley helped coordinate MI5 and MI6 in running a network of double agents.

He returned to Berlin soon after the war under the cover of Assistant Inspector General of the Public Safety Branch of the Control Commission in Germany, where he was involved in hunting for ex-SS war criminals. In 1949, Foley retired to Stourbridge, Worcestershire, and died there in 1958. A Daily Telegraph journalist, Michael Smith, brought Foley’s story to light in his book Foley, the Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews, published in 1999.