Page 53 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

40 The British Diplomats

tant, he “bent the rules” by granting visas to Jews that enabled them to
escape to Britain or Palestine. in November 1938, when the Nazis rounded
up Jews to be sent to concentration camps, he allowed several of them,
including rabbi leo Baeck, the leader of the Jewish community, to hide
in his home. He also took some great risks in securing the release of Jews
from concentration camps and then arming them with forged passports so
that they could leave the country. it has been estimated that he saved thou-
sands of lives, and in 1999 the Holocaust Museum in israel (Yad Vashem)
anointed him “righteous among the Nations.” 56
Foley’s motivations can be gleaned from a confidential report he sent to
the “the Chancery,” his superiors in london, on May 7, 1935, entitled “the
situation of Jews in Germany.” the Foreign Office and the cabinet were
thus not the only government agencies that received reliable information
on the conduct of the Nazis.
Foley was appalled that the lull in the anti-semitic campaign initiated
early in 1933 had come to an end. it had been assumed that the “revolution
in so far as it affected the Jewish question might be considered as com-
pleted.” With the “recrudescence of anti-semitism” early in 1935, it was evi-
dent that the “Party has not departed from its original intentions and that
the ultimate aim remains the disappearance of the Jews from Germany or,
failing that, their relegation to a position of powerlessness and inferiority
in Germany.” the new campaign consisted of a wide range of government
decrees designed to exclude Jews from economic activities and was marked
by “the increasing virulence of speeches of leading members of the Party.”
Foley listed many of these decrees, and he focused on the so-called aryan
paragraph, which had a long history dating back to the nineteenth cen-
tury. Various student organizations as well as social and political organiza-
tions resorted to it to exclude Jews. in april 1933, the Nazis invoked the
paragraph to dismiss Jews from the civil service and prohibit them from
practicing certain professions, such as the law and to a significant extent
medicine. Foley gave graphic examples of how the new decrees affected
not just professionals but also ordinary Jews. On the street where he lived,
the windows of a Jewish butcher’s shop were smashed to pieces at least
twelve times. “after about eight times the insurance company appealed to
the presumably aryan window smashers to cease their activities, as they
were destroying not Jewish property but German property. the bandits
have refused to be enlightened. the police seem to be uninterested. the
window breaking continues.” Foley indicated that this sort of vandalism
was “far more” widespread in the provinces.