Frank Foley
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Captain Francis (Frank) Edward Foley (November, 1884 in Highbridge, Somerset – May 8, 1958 in Stourbridge) was a British secret service agent.
He was the third son of a railway worker and after attending local schools won a scholarship to the Lancashire Jesuit Stonyhurst College. He then went to a Catholic seminary in France to train as a priest but transferred to pursue an academic career. He travelled extensively in Europe and was in Hamburg when England declared war on Germany in August 1914. He made is way back to Highbridge and joined the army, gaining a commission before being posted to France where he was injured in fighting near Ecoust-St Mein and evacuated back to England.[1]
During the 1930s, Foley worked as a passport control officer in Berlin as cover for his role as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) station in the city, acquiring key details of German military research and development.
He is primarily remembered as a "British Schindler". Using his cover as a Passport Control Officer in Berlin during the 1920s and 30s, he helped thousands of Jews escape from Nazi Germany. At the 1961 trial of former ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, he was described as a "Scarlet Pimpernel" for the way he risked his own life to save Jews threatened with death by the Nazis. Despite having no diplomatic immunity and being liable to arrest at any time, Foley went into internment camps to get Jews out, hid them in his home, and helped them get forged passports. Or, whilst pretending to do his job stamping passports and issuing visas, he would simply bend the rules to allow Jews to escape "legally" to Britain or Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. One Jewish aid worker estimated that he saved "tens of thousands" of people from the Holocaust.
After the war Foley retired to Stourbridge, a town in the Black Country, where he died in 1958; he is buried at Stourbridge Crematorium. In October 1999 he was accorded the status of a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem. In 2004 a remembrance plaque was dedicated to him at the entrance to Stourbridge's Mary Stevens Park. [1] The following year volunteers from Highbridge, Foley's birthplace, raised money to erect their own tribute. A statue was commissioned from sculptor Jonathan Sells and unveiled on the anniversary of VE Day. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Green, Tess (2005). Foley's war In: Past Somerset Times: Illustrated Studies of the Counties Rich History: v. 2. Fiducia Press. ISBN 0 946217 22 X.
- ^ Highbridge honours Frank Foley with statue, BBC, 5 May 2005
[edit] Further reading
- Michael Smith. Foley: The spy who saved 10,000 Jews. Hodder, 1999. ISBN 0-340-76603-4.
- Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News. Kevin Spacey or Anthony Hopkins for Frank Foley Film?.[2]
