21 Facts About Frank Foley

Major Francis Edward Foley CMG was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer.

Frank Foley is officially recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust and as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Frank Foley was the third son of Isabella and Andrew Wood Frank Foley, a Tiverton-born railway worker, whose family may have originated from Roscommon in Ireland in the early 1800s.

Frank Foley then went to a Catholic seminary in France to train as a priest but transferred to the Universite de France in Poitiers to study Classics.

Frank Foley travelled extensively in Europe, becoming fluent in both French and German.

Frank Foley graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Hertfordshire Regiment on 25 January 1917.

The story of Frank Foley's escape from Germany and his language skills had been noted at the War Office.

Frank Foley was encouraged to apply for the Intelligence Corps.

Together with Wilfrid Israel and Hubert Pollack, Frank Foley formed a special mechanism that specialized in rescuing Jews who were already taken into the first Nazi concentration camps.

Pollack had contacts in the Gestapo; Wilfrid had money and direct links with sponsors abroad; and Frank Foley was the man in charge of issuing visas.

People came to Israel pleading for his help in releasing their relations from the camps; he gave the necessary funds to Pollack; Pollack obtained the documents; and Frank Foley granted visas to those who Israel and Pollack told him were honest people whose names had been blackened by the Gestapo.

Pollack and Israel kept Frank Foley informed of any agents planted by the Gestapo among the visa applicants.

In 1939 and 1940, Frank Foley was a passport control officer in Norway until the Germans invaded, when he was attached to Otto Ruge, C-in-C Norwegian Forces in the Field, for which services he received the Norwegian Knight's Cross of the Order of St Olav.

Frank Foley helped Norway's commander-in-chief, General Otto Ruge, contact Britain to request assistance against the invader.

Frank Foley had his own radio transmitter that allowed Ruge to communicate with London independently of Norwegian landlines.

Frank Foley returned to Berlin very soon after the war under the cover of Assistant Inspector General of the Public Safety Branch of the Control Commission for Germany, where he was involved in hunting for Nazi war criminals.

In 1949, Frank Foley retired to Stourbridge, Worcestershire, and died there in 1958.

Frank Foley was accorded the status of a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem as a direct result of testimony from "living witnesses" found by Michael Smith while researching his biography of Frank Foley.

In 2007, a film about Frank Foley's life was in the planning stages, but the producers were then taking legal action against MI6 to release still-classified documents related to his work.

Frank Foley risked his life to save the lives of thousands of German Jews.

In 2010, Frank Foley was named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.