Frank Foley Major Francis Edward Foley CMG ( 24 November 1884 , Highbridge , Somerset – 8 May 1958 , Stourbridge ) was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer . As a passport control officer for the British embassy in Berlin , Foley " bent the rules " and helped thousands of Jewish families escape from Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht and before the outbreak of the Second World War . Early life . He was the third son of a railway worker from Devon whose family originated from Roscommon in Ireland . After attending local schools in Somerset , Foley won a scholarship to Stonyhurst College , Lancashire where he was educated by the Jesuits . He then went to a Catholic seminary in France to train as a priest but transferred to the Université de France in Poitiers to study Classics . While there he reconsidered his vocation for the priesthood and decided instead to pursue an academic career . He travelled extensively in Europe , becoming fluent in both French and German . First World War . Foley was in Hamburg studying philosophy , when the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in August 1914 . He made his way through Germany towards the north of the Netherlands by borrowing a military uniform and posing as a Prussian Army officer . Exchanging the uniform for civilian clothes , he managed to get to Emden , and with the help of a local priest found some fishermen who ferried him into the neutral Netherlands . He made his way back to Highbridge and took a job as an assistant master at Bengeo Preparatory School while considering what to do next . At the end of 1915 he decided to join the army , and entered the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps , originally restricted to barristers before the rules were relaxed to include university and public school entrants . He received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Hertfordshire Regiment in January 1917 , and was posted to France and the Western Front , where he was promoted to acting Captain . He was wounded in the chest while fighting near Ecoust - Saint - Mein and evacuated back to England . Foley had been lucky to escape ; within a few hours savage fighting , the strength of his unit had been cut by two thirds . The bullet had damaged his left lung , and after convalescence and recuperation , he was ruled no longer fit for front - line duty and sent on leave . Joining secret service . By the time he returned , the story of his escape from Germany and his language skills had been noted by someone at the War Office . He was encouraged to apply for the Intelligence Corps . In July 1918 he became part of a small unit which was responsible for recruiting and running networks of secret agents in France , Belgium and the Netherlands . After a few weeks he was sent to France , where after the Armistice he served for a short time in the Inter - Allied Military Commission of Control in Cologne . After the running down of the Commission , he was subsequently offered the post of passport control officer in Berlin which was in fact a cover for his main duties as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6 ) station . During the 1920s and 30s , Foley was successful in recruiting agents and acquiring key details of German military research and development . Foley is primarily remembered as a " British Schindler " . In his role as passport control officer he helped thousands of Jews escape from Nazi Germany . At the 1961 trial of former ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann , he was described as a " Scarlet Pimpernel " for the way he risked his own life to save Jews threatened with death by the Nazis . Despite having no diplomatic immunity and being liable to arrest at any time , Foley would bend the rules when stamping passports and issuing visas , to allow Jews to escape " legally " to Britain or Palestine , which was then controlled by the British . Sometimes he went further , going into internment camps to get Jews out , hiding them in his home , and helping them get forged passports . One Jewish aid worker estimated that he saved " tens of thousands " of people from the Holocaust . Second World War and after . At the outbreak of war Foley was recalled to London . In 1941 , he was given the task of questioning Hitler ' s Deputy Rudolf Hess , after Hess ' s flight to Scotland . After Hess was hospitalised in 1942 , Foley helped co - ordinate MI5 and MI6 in running a network of double agents called the Double Cross System . He returned to Berlin after the war , where he was involved in hunting for ex - SS members . In 1949 Foley retired to Stourbridge , a town in the Black Country , and died there in 1958 ; he is buried in Stourbridge Cemetery . Posthumous recognition . 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 Foley . Lord Janner , chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust , was instrumental in persuading Yad Vashem to look at Smith ' s evidence . Some members of the Yad Vashem committee that determines whether someone should be named as a " righteous gentile " were initially sceptical that a MI6 officer would not have diplomatic immunity but the then Foreign Office historian Gill Bennett produced previously classified documents that demonstrated this to be the case . The cover of Smith ' s book in fact features the photograph from Foley ' s first diplomatic passport with the date it was issued clearly shown as 11 August 1939 . In 2004 a remembrance plaque was dedicated to him at the entrance to Stourbridge ' s Mary Stevens Park . The following year volunteers from Highbridge , Foley ' s birthplace , raised money to erect their own tribute . A statue was commissioned from sculptor Jonathan Sells and unveiled on the anniversary of VE Day , which is also the anniversary of his death . The ' Frank Foley Parkway ' between Highbridge and Burnham on Sea opened on 7 July 2009 . In 2007 , a film about 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 . On 24 November 2004 ( the 120th anniversary of his birth ) descendants of Foley , relatives of those he saved , representatives of Jewish organisations , British MPs and other well - wishers gathered at the British Embassy for the unveiling of a plaque in honour of Foley . The then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw praised Foley ' s heroism : ' Frank Foley risked his life to save the lives of thousands of German Jews . Without the protection of diplomatic immunity he visited internment camps and sheltered Jewish refugees in his house . Frank Foley was a true British hero . It is right that we should honour him at the British Embassy in Berlin , not far from where he once worked . ' On 31 May 2009 , a garden was dedicated in his memory at London ' s Sternberg Centre , where a plaque was unveiled by Cherie Booth . In 2010 , Foley was posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government .