Hero in bronze
The Duke of Cambridge’s unveiling of a statue to the ‘British Schindler’ could not have come at a better time, finds Guy Kelly
The Duke of Cambridge unveils a sculpture of Major Frank Foley, by Andy de Comyn, in Stourbridge. Major Foley bent the rules at the British Embassy in Berlin, allowing thousands of Jewish families to flee the Nazis.
It was an understated tribute to a thoroughly modest hero. In Mary Stevens Park in Stourbridge yesterday, the Duke of Cambridge unveiled a bronze statue depicting a oncelocal resident – an older, suited figure with round glasses and his trusted briefcase at his side – simply sitting on a bench and enjoying the company of a few songbirds.
At a glance, there didn’t seem much that was extraordinary about the man the Duke had travelled to the West Midlands to honour, yet Major Frank Foley always did prefer to blend in. That, after all, is what allowed him to become one of the Second World War’s greatest unsung heroes.
As an MI6 officer working undercover in passport control at the British Consulate in Berlin during the Twenties and Thirties, it is now known that Foley saved more than 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from persecution by Adolf Hitler’s rising Nazi Party. Risking his own life and defying his employers, it was an act of heroism left unacknowledged – not least by Foley himself – for decades. Now, 60 years after his death, the man who saved more than 10 times the number of Jews as Oskar Schindler has finally been immortalised near his final resting place.
“I suppose it was the style in those days to not talk about what you’d been doing in the war, but nobody in our family mentioned it, and it wasn’t until the Nineties when we knew what Uncle Frank had been doing,” says Stephen Higgs, 64, a great-nephew. “Perhaps this has been questioned by recent events, but I like to think what he did was a very human response to what was going on at the time, and that anyone in the same situation would have done just that.”
The twists and turns of Foley’s life in the early 20th century are scarcely believable. Born in 1884 in Somerset, he was sent to a Jesuit seminary in France before training as a missionary, then deciding on a career as an academic. When the First World War broke out, he was studying philosophy in Hamburg and should have been interned along with his ex-patriot colleagues. Instead, he got hold of a military uniform, posed as a Prussian officer and escaped Germany by train.
After being shot in the lung on the Western Front, Foley then entered the Secret Intelligence Service – better known as MI6 – and was posted back to Germany in the Twenties, where his cover involved stamping visas that allowed Jews to leave the country.
With those documents costing more than £1,000, and many Jewish bank accounts frozen by the Nazis, it was often an impossible price. So Foley would charge £10 or, if that was too much, he would just ask for a letter promising the full payment. Later, he helped Jews gather forged documents, including personally hiding them in the apartment he shared with his wife, Katharine. Acting independently, he risked arrest and defied the British Government’s own immigration stance, yet continued for as long as he could.
In 1938, the family of 12-year-old Werner Lachs was trying to escape Cologne, fearing the anti-semitic persecution that was increasing by the day. Their desperate applications for a visa to Britain, then the United States, were both unsuccessful. But at the 11th
‘I wouldn’t be here but for Frank Foley. He is my saviour’
hour, the family received a letter from the British passport office in Berlin, instructing them they would be granted a temporary visa to England.
“It was a Sunday morning, and we jumped for joy,” Lachs, now 91, recalls. “We got our passports and escaped three months before the war started.”
It would be decades before Lachs knew that Foley was the mysterious “angel” passport officer who offered his family safe passage. In the late Nineties, when many MI6 documents were declassified, the author Michael Smith began investigating Foley’s story for a book, Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews. In the course of his research, he contacted Lachs. “I wouldn’t be here but for Frank Foley,” Lachs says. “He is, as far as I am concerned, my saviour.”
The family moved to Manchester, and Lachs still lives nearby with his wife Ruth, another survivor of the Nazis. They now have three children, nine grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren around the world.
Foley’s life was no less extraordinary after he left Germany when war broke out. In 1941, he questioned Rudolf Hess, after Hitler’s deputy flew to Scotland, and later hunted SS officers, before retiring to a quiet life in Stourbridge in 1949. When he died 10 years later, at 73, the funeral was simple. There were no wider tributes other than a handful of letters sent to this newspaper.
It is only in recent years that his exploits have been appreciated, with Smith’s book, an honour at Yad Vashem – the official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem – and a plaque unveiled at the British Embassy in Berlin in 2004.
In January, Foley received a rare tribute at MI6’S London headquarters, from the organisation’s current chief, Sir Alex Younger: “There is a mantra that surrounds the MI6’S history: ‘Our successes are private; our failures are public’,” he said. “It is a wonderful thing for MI6 that one of its most distinguished member’s successes are no longer private.”
Foley had no children, but yesterday, as artist Andy de Comyn’s statue was revealed, extended family joined some of those he helped and leaders from the Jewish community, as well as local Labour MP Ian Austin and the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) – both of whom played pivotal roles in having the memorial created.
After this year’s rise in anti-semitic abuse, and the row that has engulfed the Labour Party, telling the stories of Jewish persecution in the early 20th century has become all the more important, and the Duke’s support has not gone unnoticed.
“In this day and age, when we have people deny and obfuscate around the Holocaust, and so many accusations of antisemitism, it’s incredible to have our future King come and make a point of this,” says Karen Pollock, the chief executive of HET.
“It has been a difficult period over the last couple of years. A lot of people who went through such dark times can’t quite believe what they’re seeing today, but it makes what we do even more necessary.”
Higgs believes the statue “could not have come at a better time”, while Lachs admits he worries for the future. “It is upsetting.
I am concerned about my children, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” he says. “I have no feelings about Jeremy Corbyn but the important thing is that the seed has been sewn, and it is going to be a long, long time before it disappears. If people do not know this history, they will become ignorant about what happened and just believe what they hear.”
In Stourbridge, beyond a small plaque, there will be little boasting of his achievements, and a deliberate space on the other half of the bench.
“I like to think it’s because someone can sit next to him,” Pollock says. “It’s how he was remembered in Stourbridge: a quiet, humble man getting on with things without anyone knowing who he really is.”