MI6 honours spy Frank Foley for saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis

A British spy who saved the lives of thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany has been honoured by the head of MI6.

The heroics of Frank Foley, born in 1884, were celebrated at a reception at the agency’s headquarters on Tuesday, attended by his family members and representatives of the Holocaust Education Trust.

Officially a passport control officer attached to the British embassy in Berlin in the 1920s and ‘30s, Mr Foley used his position as an undercover British intelligence operative to issue false papers for Jews, securing their release from internment camps. He also hid fugitives in his flat in the city.

A letter written by Mr Foley in March 1933 reported that his office was “overwhelmed” with applications from Jews to proceed to then-Mandate Palestine, or elsewhere in the British Empire.