Spy who helped 10,000 Jews flee Nazis hailed a 'true British hero'

Frank Foley was posted to the German capital by the Secret Intelligence Service, now better known as MI6, in the early 1920s. After Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, Foley used his official job as the embassy’s passport control officer to issue visas to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution - often bending the rules under which London was trying to limit Jewish migration to British-ruled Palestine.

Foley, who died in 1973, was honoured yesterday, on the 120th anniversary of his birth, with a ceremony at the British Embassy in Berlin, attended by relatives of some of those he helped escape.

"Without diplomatic immunity, at considerable personal risk to himself, this unassuming man chose to follow his conscience," Sir Peter Torry, the British Ambassador, said before unveiling a plaque to Foley.

"He went to the concentration camps to secure the release of Jewish prisoners, he issued thousands and thousands of visas to enable Jews to flee persecution in Germany, and he sheltered Jews at great risk to himself and his family in his own home."

In 1999, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, awarded Foley the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".

Sir Peter said: "Today, it is right that we should honour him at the British Embassy, not far from where he did his work in the 1930s. He was, indeed, a very humane and honourable man, a true British hero."

Among those Foley rescued was Elisheva Lernau, 91, who travelled to Berlin from Israel to pay tribute yesterday to the man she had never met.

"His name is written on my heart," she said. "I owe my life to this man I never met, a man of humanity in a time of unparalleled inhumanity. When the British Embassy in Israel informed me of this ceremony, I knew I had to come here to say a quiet thank you to him."

Foley is believed to have helped almost 10,000 Jews escape from Nazi Germany, issuing visas allowing them entry to Palestine.

By the end of the Second World War, his record of achievement for British intelligence was prodigious. He had convinced scores of German spies to become double agents, organised the operation that saved Norway’s gold reserves from being looted by the Nazis, and persuaded leading German scientists not to pass on essential data about atomic and rocket advances to their Nazi masters.

He was also a principal interrogator of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who flew to Britain in a bizarre attempt to strike a peace deal when the war was already lost.

Foley’s work first came to light in a book by the writer Michael Smith, who was tipped off by British intelligence.

"They told me about this man who saved more Jews than Schindler," said Mr Smith.

Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved some 1,100 Jews, was made famous by Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List.

"Foley was just a good guy doing what he could," Mr Smith said.