Showing Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews by Michael Smith

The terrible tale of the Holocaust is mitigated in some tiny part by a few stories of grace and heroism; of these moments of reprieve, the story of Oscar Schindler is perhaps the best known. The inaction of foreign bureaucracies scared of offending Germany and precipitating conflict is well-known; less famous are the details of how many German Jews were procured exit visas and did survive.

Frank Foley was the British passport officer in Berlin, and would have none of the nonsense of his superiors; he endlessly bent the rules and found pretexts for getting people out. This was all the more remarkable because he was also running a major intelligence operation, acquiring details of most of Germany's military research and development that were eventually crucial to Allied victory. The double bluff whereby he concealed his spying operations through known and active hostility to the regime was both ingenious and let him do what he was morally drawn to. Foley also had a crucial role in frustrating various schemes of the Stalinist Comintern, acquiring double agents who, for example, prevented a pro-Russian coup in Brazil. Foley-The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews is a fascinating story, efficiently rather than memorably told.--Roz Kavaney