Helen Fry and Michael Smith
Frank Foley: The Spy who Saved 10,000 Jews in Berlin
Dr. Helen Fry - Frank Foley: The Spy who Saved 10,000 Jews in Berlin 1
- I’m absolutely delighted that we are having a, well, almost a fireside chat, although we’re not next to each other by the fireplace, with Michael Smith, who is an award-winning British reporter. He’s worked for a number of newspapers, Daily Telegraph, I was going to say Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and Sunday Times in his career, and also for the BBC. He’s as a bestselling author, he’s written a number of books on intelligence, which I absolutely love. It’s fabulous. You’ve written widely, haven’t you, Michael on Bletchley Park, Station X as well as the Debs of Bletchley Parks about the women of Bletchley Park. Phenomenal. Your most recent book, which I hope we’ll talk about another day on, the American, Anglo-American Intelligence relationship is awesome and goes up to contemporary times, utterly brilliant. But you are also, of course, the biographer of Frank Foley, the Passport Control Officer who saved so many of Germany’s Jews. And we’re going to discuss this topic tonight about those spies who saved Jews. And so thank you for joining us.
It’s a pleasure. Glad to be here.
So what I want to ask you to start with, to give context, because some people will know who Frank Foley is, some people may be part of the family that have been rescued by Foley, and we’ll get it more into detail shortly. But can you tell us something about why, why is Foley in Berlin then? When is he posted there?
Foley had been, he’d served on the front line in, in the western front on in, during the first World War. He’d been injured. He had tried to get into intelligence before he was wounded. He applied for a role there, although he was an infantry officer. And when he came back to England, he was evacuated down to Cornwall and he again applied and now he was wounded and had, and could not serve as an infantry officer because he had been wounded in his chest and it affected his left lung. He was accepted. And then after the war, he was in the western area of Germany, which was occupied by British and French forces as an intelligence officer. And from there he was recruited by MI6 to go to Berlin to be their head of station in Berlin. And part of the cover for MI6 officers at the time was passport control officer. And so you had to check people’s passports who were coming to Britain or offer anywhere in the British Empire as it then was. And that included, eventually, that included Palestine because Palestine was, the British controlled Palestine under the mandate laid down by the League of Nations. And so he was you for the future, which was not yet to come for him. Of course, he had, you know, the lives of very, very many Jews in his hands.
Yes. So he’s in Berlin in the 1920s and the ‘30s. And we’ll look a little bit about his espionage a bit later 'cause I think I want to focus our discussion quite early on these incredible rescue efforts. In the 1930s, he’s placed, as you say, in Berlin, he’s supposed to be running spy networks, but of course, this catastrophe with a rise of Adolf Hitler. So what does Foley actually do in terms of his rescue? Can you give us a sense of what he did and the people he, how many people he saved? He went to extraordinary efforts, didn’t he?
Yeah, I’m, when I first heard about Foley, I was speaking to two former MI6 officers who were authorised to talk to me because I was writing a book on British intelligence. And they, at the end of the interview, I’d asked them all sorts of questions. I said, “Is there anything I should know or is there anything I should have asked? Any question I should have asked, which I didn’t ask?” And that’s always a helpful interview question because very often there will be something you didn’t know about, so you never asked about it, and you’ll walk away from the interview having completely missed, you know, one of the best stories. And they said, “Yes, there is this guy called Frank Foley who worked for us in Berlin. Schindler pales into insignificance alongside him. He saved lots and lots of Jews, and you should, you should ask questions about him and find out about him.” So I went away from this conversation thinking, well, I’ve never heard of Frank Foley. I heard of Schindler obviously, never heard of Frank Foley. If he’d done all this, why would I not have heard of him? And a simple answer was, of course, because he worked for MI6 and it’s one of the most secretive organisations in the world, and people leave MI6 and they never talk about what they’ve done. And certainly not in that era. And so I started some investigating, and I talked to people, Jewish people in London and Manchester, where of course there’s also a big Jewish community. I wrote to various newsletter editors and associations of Jewish refugees.
And I actually put an advert in one of the Jewish newspapers, Israeli newspapers, and I, I spoke to our correspondent in Jerusalem and said, “Look, I’m going to put this advert in an Israeli newspaper. Would you mind just taking phone calls from anyone who responds to it?” And I put this advert in and I rang up and I asked for the small ad, you know, those things are just sort of 50 words long in, you know, long columns, you know, at the back of the newspaper. And I was put through to this woman who said, “Yeah, it would cost $300 to put an advert in.” So I said, “Oh, that’s quite expensive.” But I paid it on my credit card. I wanted to find out. And then, and it said on there, would anyone who was ever save by Frank Foley or knew of the work of Frank Foley, please contact the Daily Tele-, Michael Smith via the Daily Telegraph’s office injury sloan on this number. And then it appeared in the paper and the day appeared, Anton, who was our correspondent then rang me up and he said, and of course, you know, Israel had started long before I started work. So he rang me up when I got into work and he said, “Mick, I’ve been on the phone all day. Why did you put a front page advert?” I somehow managed to put a advert on the front page of this newspaper and people had been ringing all day about Frank Foley and .
How incredible. Extraordinary.
Yeah. And I talked to people obviously in London and in Israel, and he had, as passport control officer, it was his job to check people coming into Britain or to anywhere in the empire. And so he had to look at who they were, examine what they were doing, and why they wanted to come to England, because they might be a German spy, a Nazi spy, for example. And so that was helpful for MI6 to know that, because then they could either say, no, you are not coming to Britain. Or they could say, yes, you can come to Britain and tip MI5 off in Britain, the domestic security service, so that MI5 could track them when they arrived in London or the UK, anywhere. And so it was a very important job in terms of intelligence. But of course, as the '30s wore on, and Hitler began to, and you’ve got to remember that the first concentration camp opened in March 1933. Hitler had just come to power in January of that year. The first concentration camp, which was Dachau, opened then near Munich. And it was, initially, there were lots of social Democrats taken in and arrested gipsies, others, but increasingly, the main people who were being arrested were Jews. And people, initially, the more astute people, began to think, we’ve got to get out and began to come to the Passport Control Office, which was separate from the embassy. It was, if anyone knows Berlin, it was on the edge of the Tier Garden. One of the big parks in Berlin. And he increasingly had to increase staff, to get more staff. And it was, you know, very distressing time as it was in Vienna. And you’ve written about that yourself, so you know what I’m talking about. But in Berlin, huge queues of Jews began building up, trying to get passports or visas to go to Britain, to anywhere in the empire at all in order to try and get away from Nazi Germany.
And it wasn’t that easy, was it Mick? Michael has it, how easy was it? Because that’s something I’m often asked with regard to Austria. How easy was it for a German Jew to get out? Because it becomes so difficult that, of course, Foley starts disobeying foreign office rules and starts faking documents. I mean, just incredible, a great risk to himself, yes?
Yes indeed. And frequently his daughter, and they only had one child, his daughter had epilepsy, and she’d fallen down the steps of the embassy and gone into a fit. And in those days it was, it was much, much more dangerous than it is today when obviously we have modern drugs. And so they decided never to have children, any more children. And for Foley, it seemed one of the recurring factors was if there were children involved, and he would always try and find a way for people who could not produce the necessary documentation or didn’t have the right background, always try and pick a way to find them an excuse to have a visa. I mean, if you wanted to go to Palestine, and of course a lot of the Jews were Zionists, and they did want to go to Palestine, you had to have 1000 pounds or the equivalent in German currency of 1000 pounds. And that fluctuated, you know, you know, rows and rows and rows because of Hitler’s policies. You had to have that sort of money to transfer across to a bank in Palestine. You had to be someone who could contribute to the Palestinian economy. You had to be someone, primarily what Palestine was looking for at the time were people who had agricultural experience or industrial experience. And the vast majority of Jews were people like lawyers, doctors, people in the media, actors, writers, artists.
And it was very, very difficult for them to get visas in the normal way. Putting the 1000 pounds, the equivalent into a Palestinian bank was also problematic because the German Central Bank didn’t have large sums of sterling. So it was difficult for it to turn the Reich’s mark money that the Jews were producing when they could into Sterling for a, on the international exchanges to transfer it. And additionally, you know, a lot of people simply didn’t, increasingly towards the end, because if you wanted to get out, basically the regime and officials within the regime would confiscate all of your goods. So you had no money. And Foley did things like, on one occasion he had, on one occasion he had someone get a relative who lived in Amsterdam, and this is pre-war, so Amsterdam was still free and unoccupied. He had a relative produce a letter saying he was willing to pay the 1000 pounds. And while at the same time the Jewish guy involved said that he would, he would not write, wrote a letter to this relative in Amsterdam saying, I will not ever take up your offer. But the letter from the relative in Amsterdam is what Foley wanted to see. He didn’t care about that other letter.
He actually made that suggestion and he received the letter and said, “Fine, here’s your visa and here’s the visa for your family.” And that was a minor thing really, in some ways. I mean, there was, was, that’s, you know, his Israeli name after he managed to get to Palestine. But Zeb Parden had been, was he was Jewish and he fell in love with a German girl who was not Jewish. And you as often happens, of course, in these relationships, she fell pregnant. And her uncle was a devout Nazi, a storm trooper. And so he reported it to the police, to the police, to the Gestapo and the Gestapo hauled him off to, the SS hauled him off to a concentration camp. And he was, he was in this concentration camp and he got on fairly well with this SS guard and this SS guard told him one day, don’t go to work today, claim you are sick. And if you were claimed you were sick, they took you off to the kitchen and you had peeled potatoes and do stuff and whatever. The, he got back to the hut that evening and there was no one there. And he said to this SS guard, “Where is everyone?” And the SS guard said they tried out a new machine gun today. All of the guys in his hut had been killed as part of this testing of this new machine gun. And-
You mentioned the concentration camps there, Michael 'cause Foley, there’s that extraordinary moment in your book when Foley actually turns up, doesn’t he, and rescues from the trains that are going to the camps. Just give us a little bit of-
This is, it’s not from the trains, it is disguise Zeb Paddan. His brother was already in Palestine. He wrote to Foley asking him if he could help. And Foley went to the camp and Paddan was told, there is a British officer here to see you. And Foley said to the camp officials, he said, “I’ve got a visa for this man to leave and you’ve got to let me talk to him.” And so they let him talk to him. And Paddan doesn’t know this when he walks in and Foley says, “I’m from the British Embassy, my name is Frank Foley, and do you speak English?” And Paddan says, no he doesn’t. And the guard goes off to find someone who speaks English, who can translate, you know, into German for Paddan. And when he goes, Paddan says, “Actually, I do speak English, please go ahead. And Foley said, "I’ve got a visa for you to go to Palestine.” And he said, “Well what about my son?” The child who’d been born from this relationship that he’d had with the German woman. And Tony said, “Yes, there’s a visa here for him as well. He’s on the visa.” And Foley took him away. He actually went into concentration camps, fronted up people and fronted up guards and took away people who had the visas to leave.
Now he worked as well, didn’t he, with Wilfrid Israel. So they were quite, and and Pollack of course, they’re quite a formidable team, weren’t they? Do you want to just give us a little bit of an insight because they, Foley couldn’t have done this of course, on his own. I mean, he goes on to save over 10,000 Jews, as it says on the cover of your book. But tell us a little bit about Wilfrid Israel. Did you find out new material about what they’d been up to?
I didn’t find out anything new about Wilfrid Israel. There’s a very good biography of Wilfrid Israel by Naomi. I can’t think what her name is, but it will come back to me in a minute. But, and Wilfrid Israel, of course, was a friend of Christopher Ishwood and he is the main character in Cabaret, the film Cabaret, which is based on the issue with books about Berlin is based on Wilfrid Israel, so the Michael York character. So it’s, you know, it was a fascinating link between Foley and what was called the Hills Shrine. And Wilfrid Israel was very big in that. And one of Foley’s main agents guy called Pollak were, was also very big in it. And Foley managed to work with the Hills Shrine. Now, Hills Shrine was a social society, social organisation helping Jews get out of Berlin or helping them if they wanted to stay. I mean, it was just a Jewish social organisation helping people. And of course they were helping people to get to Palestine. That was the main occupation at the time because most Jews in Berlin would’ve been Zionists and would’ve wanted to go to Palestine. And that was a very difficult thing to do. Quite apart from all the financial stuff that I’ve spoken about, there were limited lists on how many people could get a visa to go to Palestine. And Foley had to work with the administration in Palestine in order to get them, get people there. And Foley, basically the Hills Shrine, Israel, Pollak and others would come up in names of people who needed to get out and why they needed to cut, get out. And Foley would come up for reasons, come up with reasons why he could give them a visa. And in some cases, obviously there were genuine reasons that you could get away with, but in a vast majority of cases. And Pollak says actually in a document which, and a memoir that he wrote, which is deposited at , the Jewish Memorial Centre, Holocaust Memorial Centre, that Foley saved tens of thousands of Jews. And he actually says, “I know you won’t believe me, but I was there.” He did. And in German, of course, tens of thousands actually is a single word, Zehntausende. And that’s what’s in Pollack’s memoir, which is written in German. So.
Did you have-
Astonishing achievement.
Utterly, utterly astonishing, isn’t it? We probably don’t really we’ll ever know the exact number, but as you say, well over 10,000 tens of thousands. During your research, did you get an insight because you never met Frank Foley, but did you get an insight into why he did it? What are the recurring things which I’m interested in and I know some of my friends, we talk about it sometimes, some of the Jewish educators as well are fascinated by this. The spies and the diplomats that saved Jews. Why did they do it? I mean, Foley, why did he do it? Is this something-
Foley was a Catholic, He’d been brought up and his mother was a very devout Catholic. He’d gone to a Catholic school, he’d been studying in France partier to become a priest. And then decided not to do that for some reason and went off and became an academic and taught, ironically in Germany, that’s why he was such, you know, someone that MI6 thought would be worthwhile having in Berlin because he spoke German fluently. And, but it was, he, there was testimony at the Eichman Trial that Foley had said that he looked upon Nazis as the rule of the devil on Earth. And because he was humane, because he was, you know, a devout Catholic because he having his own child who had that illness and catastrophic illness really. And she died early after him, but she died. She didn’t live a full life and they knew that was the case and would be the case. He, you, to treat children in the way that the Nazis were treating children. You know, obviously he cared about the human beings as a whole, but to do it to children as well was beyond the pale and just unbelievable for him. But I mean, we talked about tens of thousands. I mean, it just reminded me that one of those people that rang the Daily Telegraph office in Jerusalem that day is quoted at the end of the book and she wrote to the Jerusalem Post and she said in her letter to the Jerusalem Post how pleased she was that Foley was now being recognised. Because of course when people got to Palestine and they got to Palestine illegally, the last thing they could do was go around saying, I got here illegally and it’s because of this wonderful man. And now here is this release for her. And she had got there and she said, I can’t remember the precise number of children, but it was something like, I have six children and 18 grandchildren. None of whom would ever have been alive today if it wasn’t for Frank Foley, may God bless his name. And oh, that was in 1999. So we’re 24 years onwards. Who knows how many more children there are in her family.
And other families.
And other families around the world who were saved those tens of thousands. How many people are they now?
Mm. Well I’m just going to say at this point in about 15 minutes or so, we will open up for questions. So people will start having their questions ready for Michael and we’ll have a 15 minute Q&A. But before we go on to a little bit about his spying work, because that is also fascinating. It makes him a very important contribution in the Second World War. Can I talk, 'cause we’re still talking about the rescue of the Jews. It took you a very long time, didn’t it, to get him recognised. But finally he has been recognised as a righteous among the nations at . But but that’s not all is it? There’s a now wonderful, well, thanks to your work and not just your book Michael, but you have fought tirelessly, haven’t you? There are now statues, there’s plaque in the embassy in Berlin. So can you tell us a bit about how difficult was it to get him recognised?
Well, initially, MI6, MI6 now are very happy, you know, to have his name associated with them and them associated with what he did. But initially back then, in 1999, they were very helpful to me. They tried as, they didn’t know that much frankly. But in terms of his work, they tried to help me without overstepping their own lines. So I had a few questions about where he, what jobs he did at various times. And they would gimme a one line answer, which was fairly bland, you know, and there were 10 questions that I asked and there was a one line answer to all of them. And it was, everything was referred to something that was in the public domain. So, you know, they would say, “Oh, he was in section five dealing with Portugal and Spain.” So nothing, not giving anything away, but enough for me to actually do the hard yards and find out more detail about it and know where to look. As an intelligence historian, obviously I knew where to look so I, I could find things from that perspective. But, you know, back then they really didn’t want a statue. They really didn’t want something that said Frank Foley was MI6 officer or anything like, other than what I was writing in a book that, not because they didn’t want him out there, because they didn’t want to be associating with talking about their work in that way. And that’s transformed over the years. And you’ve had quite a few things. His work’s been recognised when Gordon Brown was prime minister, he had a, he recognised all British officials who’d helped the Jews during the war or the run up to the war. And Foley was the leading sort of light at that thing. But there were lots of others, of course. And Nicholas Winterm and is now quite famous.
Yes.
He did, but others as well. And I think, you know, it was all about secrecy and you know, we don’t want to be seen to be talking much, you know, and certainly not, you know, flagging ourselves up as people who, you know, did something. Not because they didn’t want to be seen to have been helping the Jews, but because they didn’t want to be seen as touting themselves as some, you know, generous, charity type organisation had done wonderful things rather than just keeping their heads down and doing their jobs properly.
Yeah, it’s the same, I’ve had similar, not that I’ve had any contact with MI6, I haven’t been as lucky as you when I was doing Thomas Kendrick who saved Vienna’s or Austrian Jews. But yes, there is that still that sensitivity around. I still have to get in, recognise yet I shared, which of course you successfully did with Foley. And I think it’s worth remembering that when you were doing this work, MI6 officially didn’t exist. I mean everybody knew it existed, but its official history didn’t come out, I don’t think, or it’s authorised history until about 2010. So if we kind of remember that you are doing this amongst the background of utter secrecy and against that background of utter secrecy, Foley’s interesting in himself for his spy life. I mean there’s so much in your book that we can’t cover this evening. If we get time, I would like to talk about the scientists and stuff. 'Cause he did a lot of work in the '30s but during the Second World War, I’m going to pick out, I know we didn’t agree this beforehand, but Hess is interesting, Rudolph Hess because like with Thomas Kendrick, the passport control officer in Vienna, Foley and Kendrick are very close friends because they both end up being minders, if you like, for Rudolph Hess. How extraordinary is that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It is, well it’s not that extraordinary. They were both German speaking intelligence, MI6 officers and Churchill said, as you know, put your best man on it. And so Foley was told to go there and Kendrick was also told to go there and Kendrick was to become a leading light in talking to other Germans who’d been captured, of course. And Foley was, it’s interesting because I do speak to, there is a guy who is, and I, you know, I don’t want to talk about him too much, but unofficial historian within MI6 and he says that there is so much about Foley that they have in their files, which isn’t out there. And every time he picks something up he thinks, my gosh, what a wonderful guy this was. You know, what, how brilliant he was. And a lot of new stuff came out in the official history, which in that version you’ve got behind you that is incorporated into it. Minor bits, nothing, you know, spectacularly new, but nuances and bits and pieces. But you know, he, during the '30s for example, Berlin was the centre of Russian Soviet espionage across Europe. It was where they actually, you sent people out from Berlin, they had loads of Russians in Berlin operating in Berlin as spies. And they sent them out across Europe. And that included of course to Britain. And Foley recruited a guy called de Graff. Wilhelm de Graff. And Johnny, he was called simply.
That was his name. Yes, .
Was, who was the guy that the Soviet military intelligence had sent to London to sort out the British Communist Party. So obviously the stuff he had and the details he had was immensely helpful to MI5 in encountering communist subversion and espionage in London. He also recruited Germans who were a German Luftwaffe officer who was able to tell the RAF intelligence precisely how many aircraft the Germans had and what their capabilities were. Sadly the RAF intelligence didn’t necessarily take any much notice of MI6, but the intelligence was there and the ambassador had actually told Foley when he heard that this spy, this Luftwaffe colonel was working for Foley, you know, providing him with intelligence. The ambassador, the British ambassador said, “You must drop him. I don’t want you upsetting Germans,” which is astonishing in you, you know, in the light of what we know now, but was nevertheless.
Didn’t want him to upset the Jews. That is extraordinary, isn’t it?
Yeah. And of course you mentioned the scientists and who was the scientific advisor to Springer Valar, the main publisher publishing scientific journals. He was in touch with the German scientists working on atomic research and when Otto Han, Lisa Mighter, and Fritz Straussman split the atom. And initially you, they were doing these experiments bombarding neutrons. And it took a while for Lisa Mightner actually realised Otto Han and Fritz Straussman didn’t realise initially they had this fantastic effect bombarding neutrons, but they didn’t quite understand in their own minds what was happening. And then Lisa Mightner who’s a Jew.
Yeah. She was rescued, wasn’t she, by Foley? Yeah.
And she’s talking to another scientist and suddenly she realises that Han and Straussman have split the atom. And Powell Roosevelt hears about this and he gets it published in one of the Springer journals. You know, they, that’s just about to come out. They ditch another article and put an article publishing that, you know, Straussman, Mightner, and, well, I don’t think Mightner was mentioned 'cause she was just an advisor, scientific advisor. But Straussman and Han had split the atom and that’s published in this German scientific magazine, goes round the world before the Hitler regime realises what’s happening. And of course obviously Hitler orders that they start working on some sort of atomic weapon and trying to sort that out at that point. But of course it’s amazing intelligence out the what we would now call open source intelligence, which is out there in free world. But equally Rosebaud is who is an MI6 agent working for Frank Foley has made himself very best friend of Otto Han and Fritz Straussman who would go on to work on the German atomic bomb.
That’s extraordinary.
Precisely. What was happening throughout the war and was able to pass messages back to MI6 informing them, actually informing them of the lack of progress of the atomic of the German Atomic weapons programme. And that in mid 1943, he’d let the British know that. And therefore the Americans of course, 'cause we passed it on to the Americans, he let the British know that the German atomic weapons programme was going nowhere and they couldn’t do anything.
And in talking of intelligence, I just want to throw this in if you don’t mind, and we’ll open up for questions. You’ve got it in your book and I’m, it wasn’t something we sort of prepared, but I wanted to ask you about the forerunner to Mossad. 'Cause you’ve got something, it’s I’ve got do off the top of my head, I’m remembering.
Yeah. Didn’t I’m, you know, It’s controversial to say it’s the predecessor of Mossad, but it certainly was, you know, Mossad Lia Libet, which is, the organisation for illegal immigration basically, forgive me, anyone who’s Israeli and says I’ve misinterpreted it, but obviously the Mossad Link and most of the people who worked in that organisation, Mossad Lia Libet, is were were intelligence type officers and did go on to work in Mossad. So, but they were smuggling people out and of course they were smuggling them out down the escape lines down to Romania, down to the Black Sea. And then they would take ships across to Israel. And of course the British with their mandate and their attempts to limit immigration into Palestine, to, you know, the needs of Palestine and what Palestine needed. We’re trying to stop these ships going but fairly new when most of these ships are going and didn’t say a thing.
It’s amazing. Okay, I’m going to ask open up for questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: So somebody’s asked for clarification. Was Foley involved in the Kinder Transport? So in the saving of Berlin’s due, or was his sort of operations separate from the Kinder Transport?
A - His operations were separate from Kinder Transport, but I can’t rule out that he had some involvement with it, but it wasn’t organisational involvement. I do know that he arranged for a number of people to get out once he’d been, when the war broke out, he was sent to Norway to Oslo, where he was in charge of MI6 operations across Scandinavia. And he arranged at that time for a number of people to get out via a kinder transport type system. But I’m no evidence whatsoever that he was personally involved with the Kinder Transport apart from that suggestion. And I never found out enough detail to link him. So I wouldn’t link him to Kinder Transport personally. I think his work was separate from that. It was all about getting visas, getting people out and helping them get out actually. And it wasn’t, you know, some people were got out via escape lines that MI6 had used for their own agents. So some people were got out more surreptitiously than the visa process.
That’s a really good point.
No, no, I’m not talking about Kinder Transport.
Q - Yeah, no, that’s a really good point that they didn’t necessarily always come out through the same way that they could be smuggled out of secret escape routes. And like you say around the Black Sea exception, we’ve got another question here. Was Foley aware, I’m not sure if you’ve looked into this, but was Foley aware of the Nazi euthanasia programme against children who were epileptic?
A - I, that’s a very good question in the context, but I’m, I’ve no information on that at all, unfortunately. And I’d be interested in more information on that, but when did that programme start would be the question?
Yeah.
Did it start?
It’s in the war, isn’t it?
If it started during the war, obviously he’d be distraught about it, but it’s not in the book and it, again, it’s not something I know about, although it’s a fascinating question.
Q - We’ve got, someone’s asked about the books, they can’t quite read it behind. So just you are interested. The biographies is on, it’s called Foley. So if you Google Michael Smith and Foley, it’ll come up, but absolutely brilliant. We’ve now got another question. Bear with me with the technology.
A - Can I just pop in there for that person who was asking about the book itself, what I, what you, if you want the latest copy, a latest version, rather latest edition, then you should seek out the Bite Back book. That’s B I T E B A C K. They’re the publishers. But you know, if the only book you can get is, is one of the early versions, then just go for that. But the most up to date one by far is bite back version.
Yeah, yeah.
And of course if you want to buy it new, that’s the one you’ve got to buy.
Q - Yeah. So someone’s asked about contemporary times, and I know probably much like myself, Michael, you probably don’t tip into the most recent stuff. We kind of tend to be historical historians if you like, but somebody’s asked, Pauline’s asked, do you think that there are people like Foley now in the British services or intelligence services who are helping Chinese, Iranian, or Russian dissidents? I mean, I mean I wouldn’t know how to answer that, but, and likewise, you may or may not have come across any such form.
A - I don’t know any detail of it, but I do know that for sure there will be contacts between MI6 and all of those people, but those types of people. So, but not as far as I know, helping to rescue them, merely to be in touch with them, helping get what is best for them. And of course, you know, the relationship between an agent and his or her handler is a very delicate one. It’s, you talking about friends is not necessarily the right thing, but certainly you have to have a relationship of trust and the way you build up that trust has to be inevitably in part because of empathy. I think any British MI6 officer who had any sense of morality and heart as indeed with any other intelligence officer in the west would have an interest in helping Russian dissidents, people in Xinjiang, Muslims, in Xinjiang, and others. But their job is basically, their job is to gather intelligence. And that’s in some ways that’s what sets Foley apart.
Yes.
There was, there is a letter when Foley was honoured at the Berlin Embassy, the foreign office did an interesting thing. They looked out documents which A, showed that he did not have any diplomatic immunity. He had no diplomatic immunity. And it wasn’t until.
What does that mean, Mick?
Diplomatic immunity means that the Nazis couldn’t arrest him.
Q - So they could arrest him?
A - Immunity means that you are protected. Diplomatic immunity means that you, your host country, whichever it is, cannot arrest you, cannot take any action against you. You have to be treated as a special citizen. And until March, 1939, there was no diplomatic immunity for Foley. And it was only then foreign office agreed to give him diplomatic immunity so long as he was not dealing with any spies and agents. And MI6 just said, “Of course, no, he’s not. No he’s not. No, of course.” By that stage he really was dealing a great deal with spies and agents inside Germany. But so that was evidence. And the other thing was a wonderful letter and the head of MI6 traditionally writes on blue paper and sign who signs his letters. It’s always been a male signs, his letters C which is C for chief and in green ink. And there’s this wonderful letter signed by C in green ink. And C at the time Foley was in Berlin was.
I’ve got one on my phone, sorry to interject.
Oh, right, yeah, yeah.
That’s Stuart Menge, that’s from the archives.
Yeah.
Sorry, Michael.
But it’s in green ink. No, not black. The letter is from Sir Hugh Sinclair, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, who was chief throughout the time Foley was in Berlin, and who wrote to the home secretary a couple of years before the war to say that he was very, very concerned over the number of Jews coming to Britain. And he thought a stop should be put to it. And the wonderful irony of that letter demonstrates that Foley was not doing what his bosses wanted him to do. And that was the point foreign office were making. He was doing something that his boss said, you will not do.
Q - Yeah. Truly extraordinary. We’ve got one final question. In your view, why is it important to remember people like Foley? I mean, you’ve, to have an extraordinary journey. I mean, what we have to understand is this takes years and years even to write biography of someone who’s well known and there’s plenty of paperwork. This is a man who’s lived completely in secrecy for at least 40 years of his career. But in terms of the rescue efforts, why should we remember people like Frank Foley in your view?
A - Well, I think Frank Foley teaches us not of course, that, you know, the Holocaust and how terrible it was, it teaches us that it’s very, very easy for ordinary people to say, “Oh, I can’t help,” or, “What’s it got to do with me?” And I know Foley was in a position of great strength in terms of his ability to do it, but as I just said, his boss didn’t want that sort of thing being done. He, you know, it’s easy to go with the flow when these things happen. It’s easy to say, you know, we talk a lot now about history and how you, the further we get away from things, it’s more difficult to remember what happened. I mean, I do talk in my most recent book, the real special relationship about the 9/11 attacks and the horror that we felt seeing you and I certainly, some people in the audience no doubt are too young to have seen it. People jumping out of the Twin Towers rather than being burned to death, jumping 30 floors, knowing they were jumping to their death. The horror of that. It’s something, you know, that people now, a lot of people out there don’t even know about, don’t even think about. And you, I wasn’t alive when the Holocaust happened. I don’t really know about it because of my research sense. The more, the further we get away from events that are groundbreaking events and where lives are lost, and obviously 1400 people is not the Holocaust.
And we’re talking about 9/11, I just used that to point out that there were people, people in the audience here who don’t remember people jumping out of those towers. The further we get away from and the easier it is for people to say, oh, it’s nothing to do with me. I’m just going to get on with my job, keep my head down. And that’s the wrong way to go about life in my view. And clearly the wrong way to go about life in Frank Foley’s view, he didn’t keep his head down in terms of rubbing the Nazis up the wrong way. I mean, he did obviously as part of his job, it was his job to keep his head down, you know, and yet here on this most important issue, he stuck his head above the parafit and said, I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to do everything I can to help. And that’s you, and things would happen. You, you, things were already happening. You spoke about Xinjiang and . And other things around the world and where you can help, you should help. People shouldn’t just be allowed to die. Or be murdered. And other people stand by and Foley certainly wasn’t one of those who would just stand by.
Oh, thank you so much, Michael. It’s given us a lot to think about. Your book is inspirational, Frank Foley’s legacy is inspirational. Thank you for sharing this with us today. Really grateful to you. Thank you.
It’s been an absolute pleasure and I hope people have found something out that’s interesting to them. And I hope people feel, you know, they want to buy the book.
Yeah, read the book folks and we’ll see you again sometime. Thank you so much.