A BRITISH spy who saved 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust is to be honoured in Berlin today as part of a campaign to position him alongside better known heroes such as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.

Officially, Frank Foley was passport control officer attached to the British Embassy in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. But the mild-mannered, balding and tubby bureaucrat was really head of station for British Intelligence in Berlin — a critical post which he exploited to rescue Jews from the Nazis, issuing false papers, securing the release of Jews from internment camps and hiding fugitives in his own apartment.

“He was a true British hero,” said Sir Peter Torry, the British Ambassador to Berlin, adding that Foley’s activities were conducted at great personal risk as he did not have diplomatic immunity. “Frank Foley risked his life to save the lives of thousands of German Jews.”

Sir Peter will unveil a plaque in Foley’s honour in the British Embassy in Berlin today — an almost unprecedented tribute for a spy, whose usual historical lot is to be quietly ignored.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will also use the occasion — the 120th anniversary of Foley’s birth — to release previously classified letters and documents written by him and showing how determined he was to protect German Jews.

Thanks to the campaigning of Michael Smith, Foley’s biographer, and support from Lord Greville Janner of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Foley was declared to be a Righteous Gentile. This honours non-Jews for their part in rescuing those of Jewish faith. During the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, he was described as the “Scarlet Pimpernel of Berlin”.

Yet for the most part Foley’s life and heroism remained swathed in secrecy. He was bound, like all spies, by the Official Secrets Act but also appears to have been a naturally modest person.

After his stint in Berlin he convinced scores of German spies to become double agents; he was a fluent German speaker and had a steady, calm manner that convinced German agents that their lives would be safe in his hands.

By most accounts Foley had a spectacular espionage career: he organised the operation that saved Norway’s gold reserves from being looted by the Nazis and persuaded leading German scientists not to pass on essential data about atomic research to the Nazi leadership.

When Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, flew to Britain in an attempt to strike a peace deal, Foley was called in as an interrogator. Foley’s influence on the British Secret Service continued in the post-war years: he recruited a high-level Soviet spy who fed secrets to Britain.

This energetic career in British intelligence buried his pre-war heroism — he died in 1958 and was largely forgotten.

Encouraged by Michael Smith, Holocaust survivors did eventually come forward to compare their notes about the short, middle-aged man who suddenly appeared at the gates of internment camps clutching release papers.

At least two of the German Jews saved by Foley — now long since British citizens — will attend the unveiling of the plaque.

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