Helen Fry
Spies and Diplomats who Saved Jews (Kendrick and Foley)

Dr. Helen Fry - Spies and Diplomats who Saved Jews (Kendrick and Foley)

- So we are going to be looking at, in a bit more detail, at two British spies who saved, I’ve put hundreds of Jews, but actually it’s thousands. And we’re talking about Thomas Joseph Kendrick on the left of your screen and Frank Foley on the right of your screen. And from Mishnah Sanhedrin, of course, “Whoever saves a single life is as one who has saved the whole world.” Now these two men I’ve decided to focus on today, but of course there are so many Righteous Gentiles, spies, diplomats who rescued Jews at their own personal cost to their own lives at a time that was incredibly dangerous in Europe. But tonight I just want to focus on these two and to provide an update for you on Vienna during this. So I think that’ll be really of great interest. Next slide, please. So the passport control offices in Europe in the 1920s and 30s were really important. In Berlin, where Frank Foley was, at the 17 Tiergartenstrasse, in Vienna, where Kendrick was, at 8 Wallnerstrasse, they were the centre of, in fact, operations by British intelligence. So they were never intended to be centres that would go on to rescue whole Jewish communities. And in the 1920s and 30s, both of these men, Frank Foley and Thomas Kendrick, were placed by the Secret Intelligence Service, what today we call MI6, in these key capitals at the end of the first World War. And at the end of the first World War, of course the threat was not Germany, but it was actually Russia. The Russian revolution had happened. The Soviets were actually using their agents, not only in Vienna, Vienna, the sort of centre of espionage in this time, but also Berlin. Berlin was very important in this period.

They would use their spies and their agents throughout western democratic countries to try and destabilise democracy. Of course, one could argue and would argue that there are parallels to what’s happening today in the start of the war in Ukraine. I guess nothing has changed in the way that these tactics were used, but this was happening already in the early 1920s. And so the British Passport Control offices were, at that time, a cover for at least one person who, and that would be the British Passport Control Officer, who would be working and doing the intelligence, running spy networks across different parts of Europe. As I said, Foley from Berlin and Kendrick from Vienna. And those Russian spies and agents would be infiltrating the various armies that were disbanding at the end of the First World War. And this is why it was so dangerous because there was this clash of ideology, things were very unstable. 21 heads of state in Europe lost their position. So a lot of the monarchies collapsed at the end of the First World War. So it was a very dangerous time for democracy. And you have Russian spies and agents trying to infiltrate the armies such that they would overthrow democracy in those respective countries. And our men, Foley and Kendrick, were tracking and mapping those Soviet Russian spies that were working for the Russian Intelligence Services. Next slide please. And it is really important to underline that both men did not have, at that time, diplomatic immunity. It was not like the ambassadors in the embassies and legations. Legations are sort of lesser versions of an embassy. It was not like that for them. They were working yes, undercover as the British Passport Control officers, but they did not have protection. If they were caught spying, they could be arrested and they would have no protection from the British government.

So they were in a very risky position on a personal level. And I’m going to focus first on Frank Foley and then turn to Kendrick, because of course everything changes for, well for both of them, with the rise of Nazi Germany. Hitler comes to power 30th of January, 1933, and there are visible changes already, of course, within Germany. And Frank Foley is now tasked with not only sending intelligence back to London about the Soviet threat, and the Soviet agents, but he now has to contend with intelligence on Germany, and in particular, on the rearmament, which of course begins almost straight away in Nazi Germany. But for the Jewish community, of course, the immediate effects were the exit of professionals, your lawyers, your dentists, your architects, your surgeons, your engineers. They were very swiftly not allowed to practise in Germany. And this probably came as no shock to Foley, but he’s sending reports back to London on the crisis that’s unfolding. And as we move up towards the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, gradually over the years, the various rights of the Jewish community are taken away until we get full on with the Nuremberg Laws. And of course, Foley cannot sit back. He has a moral compass, which means he cannot ignore in himself, in his own conscience, he is not supposed to be doing passport work, he’s not supposed to be rescuing Jews, but in fact he embarks on, as does Kendrick, this humanitarian mission that goes on to save thousands. I’m not sure that we will ever totally know how many each of these men saved. And I will highlight at this point, of course, they are not the only passport control officers, British Passport Control officers working in countries that saved Jews. But we don’t have time to focus on the others today.

So, excuse me, we have the exit of the professionals, but Foley has, during the 1920s and early 30s, built up a network, a network of agents, a network of friends. Of course not all of these are spies necessarily, but he has been going to parties, diplomatic events, cultural events. He and his wife were very active in German society. And so they have a whole network. They know who they can trust. They also have a close contact with Wilfred Israel, who as we know, is a department store owner. And Hubert Pollack. Hubert Pollack is interesting for Foley because he has contacts in the Gestapo, and that will become very important later for Foley to bribe, and that kind of thing, to get Visas. Next slide please. And before I come onto his work of saving Jews, what we mustn’t forget, that both men, Foley and Kendrick, actually saved communists. And in the 1920s and early 30s, they are tracking these communists. They are potentially a threat. But of course, once Germany comes to power, the enemy is, enemy, if you like, in terms of Nazi ideology that has to be expelled from Germany is the Jewish community, but also the communists are at risk. Fascism was vehemently anti-communism and they did track down communists. And so Foley is very rarely acknowledged for having actually saved some communist figures. And one of them in particular was a 19 year old who’d suffered a period of imprisonment because she’d been very politically outspoken of the Nazi regime. And she also had a very, very young baby. And when Wilfred Israel and Hubert Pollack heard about this case, of the communist, she’s not named in the book on Foley by Michael Smith, but when Foley heard about this, he was determined to help her and the baby. In her case, her visa was about to expire. She had an exit visa, but she had actually nowhere to go, no country that would take her. And so through the channels of Israel and Pollack, Foley agreed to see her. And so he secretly saw her and issued her with the necessary paperwork just hours before it expired. She sailed to Southern Rhodesia.

This is very interesting because we think about Jews being rescued and going to, a communist too, going to the UK, to what was then Palestine as well. But there’s a whole raft of Jews and some communists who were saved by both Foley and Kendrick that went to South Africa. Some went to Kenya as it now is, some to Southern Rhodesia. And a whole community grew up, and some Czech Jewish families also made it to East Africa. And so that’s a story which we still need to understand. And I’m in touch with some of those families, not very many, but they know that they were saved by these men, but they have no understanding of exactly how they were saved. And that’s, for them now, a journey and a learning curve. So if anyone does know anything about those rescue efforts that went to Africa, to East Africa and South Africa, we are really interested because Foley and Kendrick had international links and their spy networks and they used whatever contacts they could to rescue people, but, primarily Jews of course, but also some communists. So this whole community grew up knowing they’d been rescued and a lot of them had to leave, of course, in the 1950s with a Mau Mau Rebellion. Next slide, please. So Foley doesn’t take any concern for his own personal risk. And during the night time, his own apartment, at 56 Lessingstrasse becomes this hub. And you think of Foley, yes, he’s sending some of his intelligence reports back and he’s struggling to do that because he’s working 12 to 15 hours, at least, a day with his passport staff to save Jews.

You wonder when he got any sleep actually, because during the nighttime his apartment was this hub, he actually hid Jews in his apartment. We know that he was subject to Gestapo raids. Fortunately, they were not when he was actually hiding anyone. So he was very, very lucky in that sense, but this was hugely risky. And we’re not a hundred percent sure how much his wife was involved, whether he was trying to protect her. But she certainly, of course knew of his rescue efforts. But very interestingly, and we’ll come back to this, he actually has some other figures coming to his apartment at night, and that is foreign journalists. So he’s briefing them on the situation, on the dire situation that’s facing not only the Jewish community, but also the intelligence that he’s picking up on Nazi Germany. Next slide, please. And there’s often a misunderstanding or kind of a vague knowledge of the visa situation, although we can’t go into masses of detail on the visa situation, from having worked on foreign office reports, myself from this period, it’s really clear that it was not easy to get into Britain or to go to anywhere, actually. Certain trades were okay for Britain, and what was then British occupied Palestine, for shopkeepers and retailers, agents, and we’re talking about travelling commercial agents, export, import companies, that kind of thing. Lawyers, doctors, dentists, and surgeons. So it’s really, really quite narrow. And for the rest of the Jewish community, it becomes really, really difficult. Next slide, please. And I’ve put this in my next slide because I think it’s really worth underlining, and it’s the same for Kendrick. If Foley had kept to the rules, few Jews would’ve been saved. Because for Germany, for the country of Germany, the British government placed restrictions in 1937 on visas. The authorities had confiscated Jewish passports. It became incredibly difficult. And this is when Foley increases his use of forgers, local forgers that he pays to produce passports, visas and paperwork to get Jews out.

Really, really important for us to understand that it was not easy and some of you may well know from your own own family history, but if Foley and Kendrick had kept to the rules, of the foreign office rules, few would’ve been saved. And the British government said to Foley that there were to be no more visas for visitors, visitor visas to be issued to refugees. Now what that meant, up until 1937, and for Kendrick it would be in May ‘38, the British government allowed one month visitors visas to whatever British occupied, it could be the Dominions as well. And that allowed, very easy, for people to go on holiday, to visit for commercial reasons, whatever, and they had no real restrictions. Foley was quite at liberty to issue one month visas. So of course what he was doing in the early days where Jews weren’t in the particular category, he was issuing one month visas not only to the UK but also to Palestine, knowing that they would not come back and that no one’s really going to go chasing after them. But the government realised, I think, sort of caught onto this and actually said, no more visitor visas for the Jewish community, essentially for anyone who’s going to be a refugee. Next slide please. And Foley sends a report, this is in the foreign office files, back to London and says, “There is systematic house to house searches for, and arrests of, Jews so that they could be arrested and detained in concentration camps. It is no exaggeration,” he writes, “to say that Jews have been hunted like rats in their homes.” And he is a very important source, as are the other diplomats in British Passport offices and embassies. They are passing reports, not just to the political situation, but there are detailed reports on what’s happening to the Jewish community.

Now, some of it, the government believed was perhaps exaggerated, could it really be true? But of course we now know it absolutely was, and without, they, I believe those reports are what make it to Parliament. Next slide please. So let’s have a look at some of the, couple of the interesting characters that Foley actually saves. Ones that you might not know about actually. But it gives us an insight not only into the risks that he’s taking, but a very interesting twist as we’ll see shortly. Wolfgang Meyer-Michael, very prominent Jewish artist who couldn’t get out. Of course he’s not listed in one of those major trades. He also needed money to get out. And as a Jewish artist or any artist, didn’t have very much money. And he needed 1,000 pound, and of course he doesn’t, didn’t have 1,000 pound. So that’s equivalent to about 40,000 pound today. So Foley instigated this really clever idea. The British government needed someone to vouch for that money, and in some cases, needed proof that that money was actually in a bank account. So Foley contacted one, Foley asked him to contact a relative abroad in Denmark, if I’m not mistaken. And they drew up a contract. In fact, they drew up two contracts. This relative that said, “Yes, I’m going to put forward the money, and it’s in the bank account.” And then another contract that cancelled the first contract. So the relative in Denmark would not actually be liable for the 1,000 pound. Of course, there was no tracking mechanism.

Those agreements were not needed to be verified any further. And so Foley got some figures out, like Meyer-Michael, purely on those sort of fake contracts. Next slide please. Very clever, you’ve got them now starting to think outside the box. And Meyer-Michael wrote, later of Foley, “He was a man who fulfilled his tasks with humanity, who feared greatly for the future of the Jews, many of whom simply refused to recognise the severity of the situation and refused to move heaven and earth to leave Germany.” And that was something I found in my own research. Descendants who said to me that, their parents really didn’t think, particularly their fathers and their grandfathers, didn’t necessarily think that they were at risk, that this would all blow over. And of course, it very quickly became too late. But many of whom had fought for Germany in the First World War were highly decorated, Iron Crosses, thought that that would protect them. But as we know, it was no protection. Next slide please. And another interesting figure, Paul Rosbaud, who was an Austrian physicist, not Jewish, but he was married to, he had a Jewish wife. Foley was already in contact with him. And in the background of all these rescue efforts, of course, we need to know about German rearmament, we need to know what is happening with the atomic programme, how advanced is it? Of course, not very advanced at this point, but we want to know what the physicists are coming up with. And Foley managed to befriend some of the characters in that community.

And Paul Rosbaud was one of them. Einstein at this point was already out of Germany. He got out really early, but there were others trapped. Otto Hahn, Carl Bosch, Max Born, Fritz Strassmann. Foley was really aware of the risk to these scientists. And when Rosbaud went to see Foley, Foley faked papers to get Rosbaud’s wife out to London. And we’ll see later in a twist, Rosbaud would never forget what Foley had done for him personally, and it will tip into the espionage shortly. Next slide please. So Foley is using other contacts, Willi Preis, he’s a prominent furrier and he was, he was relatively safe for a while. He was selling fur coats for the Nazis that they could give to their mistresses. And so he’s handling the luxury goods side, and it becomes very valuable, and he was already spying for Foley. But he’s actually arrested in the autumn of '38. And when he’s held at the Gestapo headquarters on the Alexanderplatz, his wife of course is deeply worried that he isn’t going to come back and that he will end up in a concentration camp. And so she petitions Foley, and Foley goes to Gestapo headquarters with a visa. And with the visa, the Gestapo cannot actually argue with that. And that very same night, he saves Preis, his wife, and two children. Next slide, please. And there was, you know, in many cases, we’re talking about a sort of race against time because particularly the cases, what Foley was dealing with, they were so urgent that these people had to get out almost within hours or the same day. Another interesting case, of Martyl Karweik. Her father was a Nazi who completely disowned her because, well, he’d married, his wife was Jewish.

And once the Nazis come to power, of course, that becomes significant. They divorced, he would not continue to be married to her. So she was disowned by her father, which I think, she found pretty traumatic. Her mother was about to be expelled and she was not allowed actually to take her daughter with her. But Martyl actually was facing deportation to a labour camp. Next slide please. And both mother and daughter lived very close to one of the eminent scientists that was part of Foley’s network. Those network of scientists, I think they’re just fascinating, because we need this industrial intelligence. So Kendrick is now going to these figures to help him. Hans Ferdinand and Mayer, who was quite prominent in the company Siemens, Mayer actually told his friend Cobden Turner, Cobden Turner, British, head of the British General Electric Company. Cobden of course knew Foley and he told Foley about this case of Martyl and her mother. Foley issued a visa, a fake visa, and Martyl came to England as if Martyl was Cobden’s daughter. Incredible. And this is one of just many, many cases. Next slide, please. Thank you. But the twist in this, and this is what I hinted at earlier, Foley was quite cheeky 'cause he said to Mayer, would he be willing to spill the beans? Would he be willing to spill secrets of the German, of the Nazi regime?

And Mayer’s reply was, “Not yet.” But eventually Mayer would. And you can read more about what that very close friendship in Michael Foley’s book, sorry, Michael Smith’s book on Frank Foley. Fabulous biography, it’s the only one of Frank Foley by Michael Smith. As I’ve put there, Foley’s acts of kindness would soon reap huge dividends. And the scientific community, the German scientific community, Jewish, prominent Jewish scientists, as well as non-Jewish scientists, would spill the beans and would start to pass secrets back to Foley. Absolutely fascinating. So you’ve got this ongoing situation where Foley is rescuing hundreds and hundreds of Jews a month. And also in the background, using his wide contacts to actually still get the intelligence that Britain needed to fight, at this point, not physically of course, until 1939, but to fight Nazi Germany, and to keep a track of the rearmament programme. Next slide, please. So it becomes very, very difficult after Kristallnacht. And with the death of vom Rath in Paris, we know that that unleashes an unprecedented pogrom against the Jewish community, the night of broken glass, destruction of synagogues and Jewish businesses. Right across Europe is just a complete desecration. Over 30,000 German Jews were arrested, taken to concentration camps. Of course, the excuse given was for their own protection. And during the chaos of Kristallnacht, Foley is driving around Berlin, he’s an eyewitness to what’s happening. He’s sending reports back to London, but he’s still on his rescue mission. He is working, I think he only slept about four or five hours a night. And with a crisis like Kristallnacht, he cannot sleep. And the mental strain on him, he says at one point, that he can’t sleep because if he asleep, he can’t be saving anyone. He had that real dilemma as a rescuer that he only took what sleep he needed, but even then there was that feeling of guilt that he could be rescuing more Jews. Next slide, please.

So, as I said, he was hiding Jews in his apartment, including Rabbi Leo Baeck. Many of you in the UK will know, Leo Baeck became a very prominent rabbi and founder of Leo Baeck College here in London. In terms of briefing foreign journalists, this was really significant because they had their own channels to take information back to London. Sefton Delmer was one of them, very prominent journalists during this period. Sefton Delmer during Second World War went on to work in propaganda at a place not far from Bletchley Park. But at great personal risk, Foley is also entering concentration camps with documents, with forged visas and passports, and saying to the camp guards, excuse me, let this person out, I’ve got a visa. He had arguments with the guards. There were cases where the trains were arriving, and he literally took a person as they came, a Jewish woman as she came off the train. He argued with the guards, camp guards. And he would not leave, if he had a visa to get someone out of a camp, he would not leave until he had them. Extraordinary courage. And we think about, he’s a man in his late '50s. He’s not a youngster charging around, he’s in his late career, but still he has an incredible amount of energy. He was also very quiet, unassuming man. But he absolutely stood his ground and would not leave until he had secured success. But also, very, very importantly, and this has come to light too, that he and Kendrick, they got Jews into what was then Palestine. But there were a number of illegal transports. And the foreign office had said they were supposed to keep out, keep a lookout for these transports. If they were to know of networks, in fact, Kendrick used a network through Yugoslavia, which then went on to Palestine.

And he got his knuckles wrapped about that, said, “You’re going to lose your job unless you close off this.” So if they knew about illegal routes, they were supposed to tell the foreign office, they were supposed to tell them about boats going to Palestine. They both turned a blind eye. Incredibly courageous men. Foley also was involved with Mossad-LeAliyah Bet. I’m not sure if that later became Mossad. I don’t know about the history of Mossad as an intelligence agency, but certainly in this period, this organisation that was rescuing, that was getting Jews into Palestine, Aliyah, Foley actually was passing intelligence and helping this, I think it loosely was involved in intelligence as well. Next slide, please. So any means to get Jews out was really important. And this is one of the few surviving passports for Jutta Fabian, Judy Field as she now is, bless her, lives in London. You can see the, the J stamp there. She came out on papers. She and her brother, they were under the age of 10. I don’t know how he managed it, but they came out as a married couple. Quite extraordinary. Next slide, please. So Ernst Ruppel, famous industrialist who had two factories, he was at risk and taken to Buchenwald on Kristallnacht. Foley agreed to see Ruppel’s wife. And now what’s happening in the background, the wives obviously hear are on the grapevine that Foley is the man to see, and they’re visiting him at all hours of the day and night. And Ruppel, it was agreed, would be released, if a visa, the Gestapo said they would release him, if a visa could be attained by a certain date, which of course, Foley did. Next slide, please. Foley issued visas not only for the industrialists himself, for Ruppel, but for their two children, and for Ruppel’s mother.

And Foley went personally with Ruppel’s wife, he didn’t want to send her on her own to Buchenwald, with the visa and physically took him out. Ruppel later said, just simply, “I owe my life to Foley.” That’s what he said, “I owe my life to Foley.” And then of course, Foley’s besieged by wives whose husbands were in concentration camps. There’s this extraordinary scene in Michael Smith’s book where all these wives stage a demonstration outside one of the German buildings. I want to say it’s the Gestapo headquarters, but I, you’d have to check that. But extraordinary, all these wives actually demonstrating that they want their husbands released. Next slide, please. So Foley has utter chaos, and it’s the same, it’ll be the same in Vienna. Utter chaos for weeks and months on end. It’s said in the foreign office files, there are four queues down the street trying to get in to the British Passport Control Office. Foley, same as Kendrick, actually issued a thousand special visas, visit, well permits if you like, for youngsters to go to Palestine. And that he succeeded in doing, knowing that they wouldn’t come back. And by now, by '38, he is working from at least breakfast time, 7:00 AM in the morning, till at least 10 at night, grabs a few hours sleep, and he’s got visitors, as we know, in the middle of the night. And against all this, he’s doing his intelligence work with his secretaries, his two or three special secretaries who are only doing intelligence work, but of course have to be brought on board to help with the rest of the consular staff in rescuing Jews.

Quite, quite extraordinary. I’m not sure if we can comprehend the scale, and this is just relentless, but still the rescue efforts go on. And it’s estimated he saved over 10,000. Michael Smith has said to me at one point, “It could even be 20,000, who knows?” But the rescue was quite extraordinary. Next slide, please. So in a twist of fate, yeah, always a twist of fate. 22nd of December, 1938, Otto Hahn phones his good old friend, remember Paul Rosbaud? He says, there’s been a new discovery. And I quote, “Neuron bombardment created new elements of a much lower atomic weight.” In effect, they’d split the atom. Hitler ordered complete silence from his scientists, but Hahn kept Rosbaud in the loop about the progress, thereafter, Rosbaud told Foley, Foley, you remember, had saved Rosbaud’s wife’s life and Rosbaud would repay that act of salvation, if you like, with vital intelligence, which Foley, of course passed to MI6. Next slide, please. And now we come to Austria, because overnight on the 12th of March, 1938, just the 11 to 12, overnight or the early morning of the 12th of March, everything that had happened in Germany slowly, in taking away the rights of the Jewish community, was instant in Austria. Kendrick knew it was happening, was just a matter of if, not if, but when.

And you have this unprecedented force on the streets of Vienna. Austria is annexed, and immediately, of course, the Jewish community is at risk. And the scenes which Foley had had to cope with for so many years, from 1933 until '38, and of course beyond, Foley’s there until the outbreak of war. But Kendrick is now coping with hundreds upon hundreds of Jews queuing, next slide please, to get out, to get visas out. And that beautiful city, I just depicted it here with Belvedere Palace, that beautiful city of culture that Kendrick had loved, a city that he’d worked in since 1925, undercover for the secret intelligence service, tracking Soviet spies, then tracking German spies working in and out of the city, moving in and out of other countries. And the culture that he loved, the parties, it all came to an end with the Anschluss. Next slide, please. And recently as we’ll hear, I’ve been to Vienna for a very special reason, and I’ll come to that shortly. And while I was there, I was able to take photographs of the key places in Kendrick’s career. This is Kendrick in Vienna on the left there in the early 1930s. You can see his charisma. Fantastic. And on the right hand side is actually 8 Wallnerstrasse, which was the British Passport Control office It’s in the Hietzing District of Vienna, not far from Schonbrunn Palace. Very, very close, beautiful area. And he, as I say, is inundated. He goes on to save up to 200 Jews a day. Next slide, please. And that’s in official foreign office files. So now we’ve got a view of the whole of the building. Absolutely beautiful building. But you can imagine this has very much changed in 1938, where this catastrophe unfolds for him. And he, like Foley, struggled to send intelligence back to London. He embarks on his rescue mission. And there are thousands of Jews who would not have got out if Kendrick had not forged documents.

He also would put young children on the passports of British businessmen. So if a British businessman was travelling for a few days to Austria, primarily to Vienna, he would actually, they would go back with a Jewish child added to the passport as if it was their own child. And the foreign office referred to this at one point in their files as 'the ruse’. So this ruse by Kendrick was quite a good one. He couldn’t do it very often, but he did. The other thing he did, was one of his agents would actually smuggle Jews now and again in the back of a car, in the diplomatic car, with a sign in the back of the window saying diplomatic corps, corps diplomatique. Of course it couldn’t be stopped at the border. There is immunity. You cannot arrest a diplomat. And so, the car was allowed to go over the border. They couldn’t do it too often to arouse suspicion, but anything, anyway to get Jews out. And what I’m discovering now as a result of the book having come out, my “Spymaster” book, is that relatives have come out of the woodwork. Those that were quite close to Kendrick, some of them were, their relatives, their ancestors, were diplomatic staff and others were friends like Phyllis Bottome, famous novelist. She was married to Ernan Forbes Dennis. Ernan Forbes Dennis worked for the Secrete Intelligence Service. Ernan Forbes Dennis was the passport control officer before 1925 here at Wallnerstrasse.

And he went to the mountains, to Kitzbuhel, and it was there in the 1930s that Ernan Forbes Dennis set up his international school that Ian Fleming went to and trained, and a number of others did too. But there was always that close link between Ernan Forbes Dennis and Kendrick. And just before the Anschluss, Ernan Forbes Dennis was backwards and forward to Vienna, to the passport control office with his wife, and even after the Anschluss. And what’s emerging now is that Kendrick had a whole circle of, I’m calling it the Vienna circle, that it wasn’t just the consular staff, his own staff that were helping. Next slide, please. But the, he had this whole circle of journalists, of authors like Phyllis Bottome, who were writing off letters to the British government, to their friends, to people in America, trying to get Jews out. They had roots through Switzerland. It’s really fascinating. We have to realise just how severe this was for the Jewish community that within just a month of the Anschluss, 500 Jewish intellectuals committed suicide. It’s horrific. One of them was Sigmund Freud’s close friend, Friedel Statlin, who was a concert pianist. He committed suicide. They knew what was coming and they decided that they were not going to risk being deported to concentration camps and they committed suicide. Even, and you’ll have heard me say this before those of you who’ve heard my lectures on Freud, and even on Kendrick, it was even difficult to get someone as famous as Sigmund Freud out of Vienna. And the whole circle of psychoanalysts, it now appears, were rescued. Alfred Adler was another one. Alfred Adler was saved by Forbes Dennis, I mentioned just now, and his wife, Phyllis Bottome. They actually got out a whole group of psychoanalysts.

And I’m not sure that that we’d appreciated that before. Their rescue efforts were extraordinary, but it was not easy, even for someone as famous as Freud, he did not get out until early June. He of course didn’t want to leave to start with, but he was subject to at least, well, two Gestapo raids and house arrest. In Austria on the 1st of April ‘38, over the 7,000 male Jews over the age of 16 disappeared, literally, during the day and overnight and ended up in concentration camps. A deeply serious time. Kendrick increases his rescue efforts. Next slide, please. And I’ve taken a photograph, closeup photograph of the door to the passport control office because I think, it’s so symbolic of what happened in 1938. You can just imagine all these Jews going in and they, being rescued by Kendrick because he has forged documents. He struggles to keep on top of this but he manages to rescue so many, including children of course. Next slide, please. A view now of the Hietzing District. I actually took a coffee here and looked out, it’s so peaceful and quiet. But these were the streets, it’s not very far from Wallnerstrasse, I showed you just now. Just around the corner is the former British Passport Control Office. These are the streets that our spymaster walked and his agents would come and meet him. But also around these streets where Jews would hurry out to the passport office to get their visas.

I’m not going to go into detail of others he saved, I’ve talked about before, but he had did go on to save Lord George Weidenfeld, who became a prominent publisher, and so many others. Next slide, please. But it’s a very dangerous time for Kendrick himself. And I went to visit 52 Farsenthenstrasse It’s now of course been rebuilt. You can see how it’s been rebuilt. But this was the fatal meeting he made in March, 1938, when he decided with the, well with the authority of London of MI6 in London, that he could meet face-to-face one of his double agents. He didn’t know, of course he was a double agent. He held off for a very long time. You can read about it in my “Spymaster” book. Very tense time, Kendrick made one and only one meeting face-to-face with one of his foreign agents, a Czech agent, and that turned out to be a double agent. And it was at this address here. Next slide, please. Next door, number 50, will be reminiscent of what the building, I mean these beautiful buildings in Vienna, this is reminiscent of what 52 roughly would’ve looked like. And Kendrick entered, met that double agent, and was betrayed. And in the street around, in the doorways, it said in the reports that there were German spies, the Abwehr, the German Secret Service were then tracking him. They still didn’t know his name. They dubbed him the Elusive Englishman. Next slide, please.

And of course, he does get arrested after being betrayed. The Gestapo don’t arrest him straightaway, they hold out cause they’re trying to get more information. But he is taken in the middle of August, 1938 to the Hotel Metropole. And this is part of the site. It’s a humongous site. And that’s the importance, as a historian, of visiting a place, to get a sense of a place. And the hotel itself spanned the whole of a street and back. And this memorial on the left is on the corner of the Hotel Metropole, where the most horrific things went on inside, as you can imagine. And on the right, it’s just around the corner, is this museum that wasn’t open, next slide please, when I was there. But this is dedicated to a history of what happened in the Hotel Metropole and to Jewish figures and political dissidents. So this is now the new building erected in about the fifties and sixties. The Hotel Metropole was demolished. After the war, the Allies decided it should be demolished. It had such horror. And I don’t know whether it’s just because we know that’s what it was, but around by that monument, it’s just got a kind of eerie feeling. It’s not very far from the river actually. Next slide, please. So last month, I went to Vienna, as I said. And it was for a very special reason. Because the British Embassy, in conjunction with the Association of Jewish Refugees, was unveiling a plaque to the likes of Kendrick, to the consular staff, and to Anglican clergy who saved Jews in 1938. The British Embassy in Berlin has a plaque to the consular staff who saved Jews in Germany. They haven’t actually named any specific people on the plaque itself, but right opposite. So the legation where Kendrick was, the British Passport Control Office, at Jacquingasse, had to move.

It moved around July '38 and is what is in Metternichgasse, which is now where the British Embassy is. And right opposite is this church, Christ Church. I dunno if any of you have been there, but if you go to Vienna, it’s really worth seeing. And in Christ Church, Reverend Grimes, Hugh Grimes and Fred Collard were actually, next slide please, helping Kendrick with the rescue efforts 'cuz Kendrick had now moved into the centre into a building at the side of the Embassy. This is the inside of the church. They opened it for us on this occasion. And in one of the upstairs rooms, some of you probably know this story, Reverend Grimes would baptise a number of Jews. When he was at risk, he had to leave by late July '38. The Gestapo suspected him being a spy, which of course they were, right, he was. And then Collard took over. So together they saved over 1800 Jews and they issued them with baptism certificates, but there was no water. So in Christianity, for a baptism to be valid really, you have to have water. But they were instructed in catechism, in the Lord’s Prayer, just in case they were stopped on trains out of Austria. And they could start reciting it and the guards would think, oh yes, no, they are Christian. So, very interesting.

They had enough teaching in a secret room upstairs to this church to be able to pass if they needed to, if they were captured in interrogation or if they were stopped by guards or police. So 1800 were saved thanks to these two men and they are commemorating, next slide please, they’re commemorated on this plaque. Next slide, yes. So this is, was about all of the Embassy I thought I should photograph, otherwise I might get arrested. You never know. So 6 Metternichgasse is actually, as I say now, where the British Embassy is. And I hope if any of you go to Vienna, you will visit, because that extraordinary day, really just a few days before the 85th anniversary of the Anschluss, the plaque was unveiled. Next slide, please. And this is, this is the occasion. Ambassador Lindsey Skoll, she gave a fabulous address about the rescue efforts. And Lord Pickles, Lord Eric Pickles, who has done a lot of work in this field to recognise those diplomats, consular staff, spies, and others who rescued so many of Europe’s Jews. And many of you probably know of his work. Next slide, please. So the plaque is coming up here, yes. On the right is Schultz, who is the Austrian President of the Parliament, of the Austrian Parliament. And for those present and those of us that, that were able to be there, there were of course a whole lot of VIPs, ambassadors, diplomats, but also relatives who had been saved by Kendrick, relatives who’d been saved by the Anglican clergy. There were also relatives of some of the diplomats that worked alongside Kendrick. So a really, really, very, very special and powerful moment. And I think it wasn’t lost on us. Each of the VIPs gave a speech.

Eric Pickles of course did and Schultz did as well. And he openly acknowledged the Austrian history of antisemitism and the need to address this in Austria. And I think both the ambassadors and other VIPs there and the rest of the guests like myself, realised that we think there is some movement in Austria. He’s a good chap and he is making progress. I guess he’s making progress. Next slide, please. And then I thought, I don’t normally do this, but I put one of me next to the plaque because it’s been a long journey in getting Kendrick recognised, even this far. Frank Foley was recognised in the 1990s, but it took Michael Smith, who worked tirelessly for over a decade, to get Frank Foley recognised. Next slide, please. And Frank Foley, there are statues in various places in the place of his birth. Yad Vashem has now recognised Frank Foley, I think it was the late 1990s. Michael Smith struggled to get him, Foley recognised there, because the feeling was that Foley was only doing his job. Of course, Foley was not only doing his job. If Foley was only doing his job, he would’ve kept the intelligence work, running the spy networks, which of course he did do in the background. But he rescued who knows how many thousands of Jews and he has been recognised Yad Vashem. It’s been more of a struggle. I think I’m where Michael Smith was across his 10 years in the 1990s. Next slide, please. Because what about Kendrick and Yad Vashem? Kendrick has not yet been recognised at Yad Vashem. We have an application in, and I’m really hoping they will.

It’s this sort of murky world, I know, when the spies and diplomats start this rescue effort, but together they saved, each of them saved at least over 10,000 Jews. And we’re not counting numbers, of course we’re not. But it gives us, because if you save one life, you save the world. But it’s really to understand the legacy of these guys. And I’m really hoping that that event in Vienna, on the 7th of March, 2023 when that plaque was unveiled, is a turning point that Yad Vashem will eventually recognise Kendrick. And I finish with a comment on this photograph. I love this photograph. It’s only emerged recently of Kendrick, that’s spy master. Look at his face. He’s got a charisma, a kindness, but he’s also pretty uncompromising. No one’s going to get past him. But the twist in this, this was taken about five years before he dies. He dies in 1972. In the late 1960s, he goes to a studio in Sussex, if I’m not mistaken, it’s in Sussex. And he visits Lottie McGrath, very prominent Jewish photographer.

And he actually rescued her. He saved her life in Vienna. And I love that connection, that decades later he’s still in touch with her. And she takes a whole series of these photographs. And Kendrick was camera shy, as I think Foley was. He’s used to working in the shadows. To living in the shadows. You don’t make yourself very prominent. So we don’t have many photographs of him. But this rare photograph that’s emerged just says it all. There is our spy master. So I think just to conclude, to say that I hope each of us in our own way will continue to remember those righteous Gentiles. The legacy needs to be told because if we do not remember history, we’re destined, we really are destined to repeat it. And a hand on heart, I hope Yad Vashem will honour Kendrick because he did as much as Foley. They were very close colleagues in the wartime as well, working colleagues. And they really deserve, both of them, to be there at Yad Vashem. Thank you.